Restaurant Toque

Restaurant Toque sits in Palma a few steps behind the Passeig Marítim, where the Avinguda Joan Miró begins, and has been doing something rare on this island since 2007: it cooks Belgian. The house describes itself as a Belgian bistro with a Mediterranean leaning, and that is exactly how the menu reads — Belgian classics stand beside Mallorcan dishes without either side smothering the other. It began as a father-and-son project. Today Claude runs the kitchen, trained at the Balearic hotel school and afterwards at the hotel school of Sant Pol de Mar on the Catalan coast. The work starts at the market: the menu changes with the seasons, and many dishes can also be ordered as a half portion. That sounds like a small thing, but it says more about the attitude of the house than any self-description. The setting stays deliberately small. Toque understands itself as a quiet corner where guests should feel at home — as a couple, with family, or in a larger group, for which there are separate menus. The kitchen at Toque: Belgian and Mediterranean at once The dish the house itself puts forward is the Filet Américain, the Belgian steak tartare. It differs from the French model in its very finely chopped meat and in the mayonnaise, which gives it a soft, almost melting texture. Alongside it stand snails in the Burgundy style, a house-made foie gras terrine with brioche and chutney and, on the lunch menu, a salmon waterzooi seasoned with wheat beer. What the Mallorcan side of the menu carries The island is no afterthought here. There is a coca with cuttlefish, caramelised onion and sobrassada, a frit mallorquí of vegetables with fennel, cod gratinated with allioli in the island manner and a confit, boned porcella on sweet potato cream. Between the two lies the Mediterranean: sea bass with ratatouille, scallops in a crust with prawn and leek, salmon tartare with kimchi mayonnaise, cannelloni of Ibérico pork with truffle sauce, a beef fillet Stroganoff and a false risotto of wheat with wild mushrooms and Parmesan. Anyone eating vegetarian will find the vegetable frit, a courgette carpaccio with Mahón cheese and olives and a gazpacho of tomato and strawberry with basil sorbet. The desserts are made entirely in house and carry the same double nature. The ingot of Belgian chocolate with coffee ice cream and caramel is the clearest bow to the origin, and the chocolate fondant arrives with speculoos ice cream. Against them stand a crème brûlée with bourbon vanilla, a puff pastry of baked apple with rosemary ice cream, a pavlova with red fruits and a selection of Mallorcan artisan cheeses from S'Aglá. Belgian beer as a menu of its own The beer list is not an appendix but a chapter in its own right, and for a share of the guests the actual reason to come. It is ordered by origin and style: Trappist beers from genuine monastery breweries, abbey beers in their manner, cloudy wheat beers, Belgian specialities with bottle fermentation and lambics of spontaneous fermentation, plus fruit lambics, a gluten-free and an alcohol-free beer. New arrivals join regularly and stay on the list for a while. The wine side is Spanish in character, with a few foreign growths. Who Toque suits Anyone who does not want to eat only Spanish in Palma. For groups there are two separate menus in which the starters are shared and main course and dessert are chosen individually; they have to be booked ahead and the choices passed on in advance. The house takes reservations by telephone and through its own website — with a room this small, that is no bad idea.