Picaro restaurante

Pícaro sits down on the harbour of Port d'Alcúdia, right on the waterfront street Carrer Gabriel Roca, and calls itself italo-Mediterranean. For once the formula holds: the menu comes from Italy, the surroundings supply sea and port, and the terrace stands close enough to the water that the house describes the sound of the sea as part of the evening. The name is not an arbitrary pun. It goes back to the family's grandmother, whose surname was Ícaro — Ícaro became Pícaro, the rogue. Her recipes, handed down across generations, are by the house's own account the core of the kitchen: simply conceived, honestly cooked, always aimed at the people at the table. That is combined with produce from the island. What the kitchen at Pícaro is about The menu is broad but ordered. It opens with vitello tonnato, a beef carpaccio with burrata cream, confit cherry tomatoes and fresh truffle, and a frittura mixta of prawns, clams, mussels, queen scallops, calamari and baby squid. Alongside come focaccia in three levels of ambition and salads, among them a caprese variant with Sardinian pan carasau and burrata. With the pasta it turns idiosyncratic. The pappardelle al parmigiano are finished inside a hollowed parmesan wheel. Next to them stand rigatoni alla carbonara with egg, pecorino and guanciale, trofie al pesto with potatoes from Sa Pobla, a tagliolino with cuttlefish ink and seafood, violet gnocchi with four cheeses and a pappardelle with ossobuco bolognese. Pizza dough as a building material The most striking signature is not in the pizza list but in what else happens to the dough. The molten provolone alla pizzaiola arrives under a lid of pizza dough, so does the parmigiana of fried aubergine, and the caesar salad is served inside a pizza bread. Dough here is not only a base for toppings but a structural part. The pizza list itself is long and classically set out: margherita, capricciosa, diavola, salsiccia e funghi, a quattro formaggi with taleggio, brie, parmesan and gorgonzola. To that comes a mallorquina with goat cheese, sobrassada and honey — the island version that hardly any Italian house in the north leaves out. Three calzoni, one of them truffled, close the section. Ravioli, fish and the sweet side A section of its own belongs to the house-made ravioli, and it is the best evidence that real work happens in this kitchen: burrata with cherry tomatoes in salsa napolitana, goat cheese with pear and gorgonzola sauce, mushroom with tartufata, braised beef with potato parmentier and rosemary, pumpkin with walnut sauce. The fish list stays close to the harbour: wild sea bass, salmon, tuna tataki and grilled red carabineros. Among the meat dishes a lamb shoulder in its own juices with crisp polenta, a beef fillet with foie and a grilled entrecôte stand side by side. At the end come chocolate coulant, a cheesecake built on parmesan, panna cotta, the nonna's tiramisù and a tarte Tatin. Pícaro on the harbour of Port d'Alcúdia The house is addressed under Alcúdia, but it actually sits down in the port quarter and not up in the walled old town — a difference of a good two kilometres on which the approach regularly fails. Between the ferry terminal, the fishing harbour and the promenade this is a corner with activity and a view of the water. Anyone wanting to sit outside is better off announcing themselves first; the house asks for a reservation itself.