Restaurant Manique

Manique sits in one of the narrow lanes of the old town of Santanyí, a few steps from the Plaça Major — and in the south-east of Mallorca it is something of a one-off. This is not a Mediterranean kitchen with a few exotic accents, but a Brazilian kitchen that has taken the Mediterranean as its neighbour. Brazilian houses are rare on the island, and in this corner of Mallorca you will hardly find a second one. Behind it stands the Brazilian chef Marcos Lee. He brought his grilling craft with him to Santanyí and built a menu from it that puts Brazilian technique together with Mallorcan produce. You eat either inside among a great deal of greenery or outside in the courtyard. The parrilla is the starting point At the centre of the kitchen stands the parrilla, the open grill fired with wood and charcoal. It is not a decorative extra but the method the entire menu is built on: it produces strong, carefully controlled heat, and fish, seafood and meat pick up roasted aromas and a crust over it that cannot be had any other way. The ingredients come from the island wherever possible. The house works together with Mallorcan fishermen and producers, and fish is the backbone of the menu rather than an addition to it. What comes out of this is not fusion for its own sake but a clear division of labour: the technique is Brazilian, the produce is Mallorcan. What Manique puts on the table Things often begin with the slow-fermented Brazilian flatbread with truffle butter. Alongside it come the yuca cheese balls from the Brazilian snack repertoire, oyster with the house sauce and Ibérico ham, lychee with cream cheese, wasabi and sesame, and hearts of palm vinaigrette with grapes. From the sea come squid vinaigrette with grapes, octopus vinaigrette with green apple, raw scallop carpaccio with truffle oil and mujjol caviar, and a tuna tartare with tempura croutons. The octopus is among the dishes the house is most often recommended for. Three things define the main courses: the charcoal-grilled Angus tomahawk, prepared Brazilian style and expressly meant for sharing; the grilled corvina, served on a banana leaf with local herbs; and a seared tuna with house-made chimichurri. To finish there is baked banana with Brazilian caramel milk, cinnamon and cocoa nibs. Vegetarian, families and booking Even though fish and fire take the foreground, vegetarian guests are not left with a plate of side dishes here. Vegetarian dishes are marked as such on the menu, and there are proper plates of their own such as the green salad with passion fruit sauce or the aubergine parmigiana; the hearts of palm and the flatbread fall into this category too. For children there is a small menu of its own that goes beyond the usual: pasta with butter or tomato sauce, pizza, nuggets with rice or potatoes. In price terms Manique sits in the upper bracket, and booking is expressly recommended — on market days the town is busy. Santanyí around Manique Santanyí is not a coastal resort but a market town of golden-yellow Marès sandstone, still quarried in the area to this day, which gives the townscape its unusually coherent effect. Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the centre around the Plaça Major and the church of Sant Andreu fills up with the weekly market, one of the best known on the island. On top of that comes a gallery scene remarkable for a town of this size: contemporary art has settled in here among the stone houses. Anyone who combines market day with a wander through the galleries and lets the evening wind down at Manique has seen a good deal of Santanyí.