Happy Dream Bar Restaurante sits on Carrer de Formentor in Port de Pollença, one street back from the bay. Walk along the seafront promenade and you walk straight past it: a narrow room with no sea view, no wide shopfront and a modest number of tables inside. That is exactly why some guests only get in on the second attempt — in the evening the room is usually full.
The house is run by a Cuban family. He cooks, she runs the dining room, their daughter helps out. You notice it over the course of an evening: the person cooking comes out of the kitchen towards the end of service to ask whether you enjoyed it, and the person working the room recognises guests on their second visit.
The cooking is Mediterranean, with a clear emphasis on rice, fish and meat from the charcoal oven. On top of that comes a Cuban note that sits less on the plate than in the glass.
What Happy Dream Bar Restaurante puts on the table
The menu rests on four pillars, and the house names them itself: paellas, fresh fish and seafood, meat from the charcoal oven, and handmade pizzas.
Paella is the calling card. There is a seafood version, a mixed one with meat and seafood, and a vegetable version, and it is started when you order rather than held ready. One detail that is not a given on this island: the house will cook it for a single person.
From the fish side come turbot and Dover sole, along with sea bass and scallops, and a rice dish with prawns, mussels and clams. Among the starters you will find croquettes, Padrón peppers and bread with aioli, plus a goat's cheese salad. Eating vegetarian or vegan here does not mean piecing a meal together from the margins.
Paella, fish and the charcoal oven
The meat comes out of a charcoal oven, and the house makes a visible point of it. The menu lists entrecôte, an aged chuletón, ribs and fillet. The chuletón comes from Rubia Gallega, the Galician breed prized for its fat marbling and its long ageing; the portion is meant for two.
The real fixture, though, is something else: lamb ribs, served pink. They are the meat dish people come back to more often than any other. Alongside them come house-made sides — oven potatoes, braised vegetables, salad — and a mushroom sauce on request.
The pizzas run alongside all this, on a dough the house carries for more than a day before it goes into the oven. And if you ask for something sweet, there is a chocolate fondant with ice cream, or one of the rotating house-made desserts.
A Cuban family in Port de Pollença
The name of the place tells you nothing about the kitchen, and the owners' background is not printed on the menu either. It shows up at the end of the meal: a small house-infused spirit arrives at the table, made to their own recipe, and sometimes a rum with it. The cocktails run in the same direction; sangria and a small, carefully chosen wine list sit beside them.
That is the mixture that makes this house what it is: a harbour kitchen of rice, fish and charcoal, run by someone who came from the Caribbean, in a room that looks more like a neighbourhood bar than a restaurant.
The room, the street, the evening
The dining room is small, narrow and bright, and you eat indoors. There is no terrace over the water, and the house does not claim one. If that is what you want, it is a few streets away; if you do not need it, what you get instead is a quieter room where locals sit beside visitors.
The place is set up for families, and anyone planning a private party can take the whole room: there is space for up to forty. At that scale, booking is not a formality but the difference between a table and a walk.
Facilities & services
Parking
- Street parking
- Free
Accessibility
- Entrance
- Seating
Payment
- Credit card
- Debit card
- Contactless
Service
- Takeout
- Dine-in
- Table service
Features
- Restroom
- Bar on site
Atmosphere
- Casual
- Cozy
Highlights
- Great wine list
- Great cocktails
- Great coffee
Reservations
- Reservations accepted
Good for
- Families with children
- Groups
