Verbano

Verbano sits on Carrer del Llaüt in Les Meravelles, the stretch of the Playa de Palma that runs between Ca'n Pastilla and s'Arenal. The house calls itself a Modern Italian Kitchen, and that reads less as a label than as a job description: pasta made on the premises, pizza from the stone oven and a kitchen that follows the seasons. The menu is short enough to take in over one evening and broad enough that a group with different tastes does not have to negotiate for long. On this stretch of coast, that is not a given. The kitchen at Verbano The pasta is made in house. You notice it most in the Pasta Pollo, for which the fusilli are twisted by hand and brought together with chicken breast, mushrooms, spinach, caramelised onion and a creamy herb sauce. Alongside sit the plates you expect at an Italian table: spaghetti bolognese built on a base of carrot, celery and onion, spaghetti frutti di mare with seafood and prawns in a white wine tomato sauce, and an aglio olio that gets by on olive oil, garlic, chilli and cherry tomatoes. The pizza comes out of the stone oven. The calling card is the Verbano Spezial, with goat's cheese and fig on the kitchen's own sauce, plus rocket and garlic crisps — sweet and savoury in one bite, a combination that turns up on no standard menu. Straighter choices are the funghi, the tonno, a salami with padrón peppers and chilli, the parma rucola or the calzone. The pumpkin pizza has a signature of its own too, with crème fraîche, pickled red onion, baby spinach, mozzarella pearls and pine nuts. Starters, classics and dessert The antipasti are worth a look first: bruschetta in its classic form or as a mix with avocado and goat's cheese, vitello tonnato with sous-vide veal, tuna mayonnaise, capers and anchovies, a carpaccio of beef fillet with lemon vinaigrette, nuts and parmesan. If you are two and cannot decide, there is the large antipasti board, which carries melon with ham, burrata and house-made falafel among other things. Among the classics, Italian sits on equal terms with everything else: gilt-head bream fillet with green asparagus, olives, capers and pine nuts, strips of entrecôte served warm on rocket, a risotto with porcini and shimeji, a beef fillet with herb butter, and a breaded chicken schnitzel. To finish, the menu lists tiramisu, a brownie with walnut and deep-fried vanilla ice cream in a crisp coating. Verbano on the Playa de Palma Verbano is listed as an ambassador of the Palma Beach quality initiative. Behind it stands an association of local business owners which, together with the Playa de Palma hoteliers' association and the city of Palma, works to position this stretch of coast as a quality destination. The restaurant's owner is Nico. The dining room is air-conditioned and there is a terrace outside. Tables are booked through the restaurant's own system on its website. Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free The menu marks its vegetarian and vegan dishes explicitly, and there are more of them than you would expect from a house with a stone oven: spaghetti aglio olio, the veggie salad with roasted vegetables, basil pesto and toasted seeds, the pumpkin pizza, both bruschetta versions and the burrata with guacamole, rocket, tomato and avocado. The falafel is made in house; it comes as an addition to the rocket salad or on the antipasti board. Eating gluten-free works here as well.