Restaurant Marcelo´s

Restaurant Marcelo's sits in Can Pastilla, where Palma turns into the Playa de Palma: a Mediterranean place with a bar, where rice dishes and fresh fish set the tone. The house sees itself as a market kitchen, cooking with what the market gives it, and keeps the menu correspondingly broad. It runs from small plates to share up to paellas meant for the whole table. An aperitif with a few raciones works here just as well as a long dinner. The printed menu comes in Spanish, English, French, German and Italian — a clear hint as to who sits at the tables in Can Pastilla. The register stays informal and family-friendly. Rice, fish and the Marcelo's menu The rice dishes are the core. They come in seven versions: mixed with chicken, pork and seafood, black with squid ink, with lobster, with shellfish, a land version with beef, pork and chicken, vegetarian with seasonal vegetables, and with octopus. The same seven combinations exist as fideuà, where short noodles take the place of the rice. Every pan is made to order, from two people up. With fish the kitchen thinks Mediterranean: baked gilt-head bream on potatoes and vegetables, sea bass from the plancha, hake in green sauce with clams, grilled cuttlefish with vegetable chop suey and flaked almonds. From the bar side come the classics: gambas al ajillo the way the house makes them, fried baby squid, fried anchovies, mussels in salsa criolla, variegated scallops from the plancha. The warm tapas get more idiosyncratic — pastry rolls of blood sausage and apple with tomato jam, a chicken skewer with onion marmalade, a cod pincho with tomato and padrón pepper, veal meatballs in salsa criolla. The classics are there all the same: ham croquettes, huevos rotos with serrano ham, potatoes with two sauces. From the grill, with an Argentine accent Alongside rice and fish, Marcelo's has a second signature, and it comes from Argentina. Argentine-style pork collar with mustard-and-honey sauce and rosemary potatoes is on the menu, the group menus offer an Argentine entrecôte from the grill, and the wine list carries a Malbec from Argentina. The rest of the mains stay down to earth: duck breast on baker's potatoes with mango chutney, Mallorcan lamb cutlets, a pork knuckle braised in a casserole with oven potatoes, pork chops, a large beef chop, entrecôte, plus a mariscada for two. To finish, house tiramisu, crema catalana, cheese flan, chocolate coulant or lemon sorbet with cava. Bar, terrace and chill-out corner Marcelo's is restaurant and bar in one. Beyond the dining room there is an outdoor terrace and a tucked-away chill-out corner given over mainly to cocktails and long drinks; sport runs on the screens at the counter. The wine list is arranged by origin: Rioja and Ribera del Duero, a Verdejo from Rueda, an Albariño — and beside them island wines, a red Obac, a white Blanc de Prensal, a rosé from Macià Batle. Sangría comes made with wine and with cava. Bigger parties are explicitly welcome: Marcelo's puts together group menus with starters to share and a choice of main course, and hosts company dinners as well as private celebrations. You book through the booking system on the house's own website or by phone. And if you would rather eat at home, you order the rice dishes ahead and collect them ready; delivery is available too. Can Pastilla on the doorstep Can Pastilla is the western tip of the Playa de Palma and a district with a rhythm of its own: a marina, a beach promenade, and behind them a dense grid of residential streets. Marcelo's stands in one of them, within walking distance of the water. From here the promenade runs along the water all the way to S'Arenal; the other direction leads into Palma. And anyone spending their last evening before the flight home here does not have far to go to the airport.