La Mujer de Verde is the address where Bon Lloc lives on — not as a memory, but as a kitchen that works every day. The restaurant sits on the Plaça de la Porta de Santa Catalina in the Puig de Sant Pere quarter, at the point where Palma's old town ends. If you are looking for Bon Lloc in Palma, this is the right place: the room on Carrer de Sant Feliu is gone, and the family behind it now cooks on this square.
Bon Lloc was Mallorca's first vegetarian restaurant, founded in 1978 in a lane behind the Basílica de Sant Francesc, and from the start it was more than a place to eat: there were yoga classes and workshops on nutrition. Over four decades the house got the island used to the idea that you eat well without meat. Juanjo Ramírez ran it for the longest stretch of that time.
When he closed it, that was not a defeat but a decision: he wanted to build something once more, and to build it with his children. Paula, Mercè and Carlos Ramírez, together with son-in-law Álex Ramos, opened La Mujer de Verde alongside him. The name came from a song by the band Izal — the line about the woman in green who puts her dress on again to rescue someone reached him at exactly the right moment.
From Bon Lloc to La Mujer de Verde
The change of address was part of the idea. Carrer de Sant Feliu, where Bon Lloc spent its last stretch, has turned into a lane of galleries and estate agents where hardly anyone lives any more. Puig de Sant Pere, by contrast, has stayed a residential quarter. For the family that was the reason to come here: a neighbourhood rather than a stage set.
What they cook for they call conscious eating: knowing what a food has been through before it reaches the table, and knowing how it agrees with your own body. Mercè Ramírez comes from natural and macrobiotic cooking and runs cookery courses together with Álex Ramos. The restaurant holds workshops regularly, alongside wine and tea tastings and changing exhibitions by Mallorcan artists.
What happens in the kitchen at La Mujer de Verde
The menu changes month by month and is built from whatever the season on the island gives them. At midday you assemble a set menu from a choice of courses; in the evening the kitchen cooks à la carte, with its own section of small things to share. No single dish is ever a promise, then — yet the handwriting stays recognisable.
It is grounded in the Mediterranean and reaches a long way out. From Lebanon comes the oven-roasted aubergine with tahini sauce, pomegranate and beetroot crisps, a dish that keeps reappearing and is among the things the house is known for. Alongside it are tacos in house-made tortillas, sometimes from blue corn, sometimes Japanese as a nori leaf with watermelon tartare, plus bao buns with shiitake or tandoori tofu with red lentil dal. The cashew cheese and almond parmesan are made in house.
The desserts are no afterthought. The Avellana Remix, a hazelnut and chocolate construction that the house itself describes as the vegan answer to a Kinder Bueno and a Ferrero Rocher, has earned a reputation of its own. Everything on the menu is free of animal products, and allergens are marked on every dish.
The square at the Porta de Santa Catalina
The Plaça de la Porta de Santa Catalina is one of those places where the old city boundary is still legible: here stood the gate through which you left Palma towards the harbour. The small square is quiet, even though plenty goes on around it — the Es Baluard museum sits right next door on the bastion, and beyond the Passeig Mallorca the nightlife quarter of Santa Catalina begins.
The interior comes from the Lobo architecture studio and is kept bright and restrained. Reservations run through the booking system on the restaurant's own website, which is worth using: word about the house got around Palma long ago.
