Le Seazon bistro

What Le Seazon Bistro puts on the table

The card opens with the tapas: bread with house-made espelette aioli and tapenade, beef carpaccio with parmesan and truffle oil, garlic prawns flambéed in brandy, grilled artichoke hearts, fried Mallorcan chipirones. Among them sit Fine de Claire oysters — a French appellation you do not run into constantly on a menu in a Mallorcan harbour.

Truffle runs as a thread through the whole house: through the carpaccio, through the coquillettes, through the cod fillet with truffled purée and, if you like, into the fries and the mashed potato as well. Vegetarian and vegan dishes are marked as such, pizza and pasta come gluten-free on request, and there is a small section of its own for children.

From the hot stone and from the sea

With the meat the house shows its hand. The chateaubriand arrives raw at the table together with a stone heated far enough that you cook the fillet yourself and decide when it is done; this firetable turns up again and again on the house's own channels. Beside it stand an aged T-bone for two, slow-cooked pork ribs with smoked barbecue sauce and, if you want something simpler, a smash burger with raclette and bacon.

The other half comes out of the water. Scallops are flambéed and served with a white citrus butter sauce, the John Dory fillet with a shellfish sauce and black rice, the sea bass baked in a salt crust, flambéed and brought out for two. The big seafood platter is ordered a day ahead. Raw, there is tuna: once as tataki with teriyaki and wasabi, once as a tartare with fresh fruit and coriander.

Wine, gin and cocktails

The French vein is clearest on the wine list. The rosé comes from Provence, the red from Bordeaux, the Rhône and Burgundy; alongside them stand Mallorcan estates from Felanitx, Consell and Biniali, and Spanish wines from Ribera del Duero and Valencia. The gin is not ordered by origin but by character — classic and dry, floral, spice-forward, fruity — with Mallorcan distilleries standing next to French ones.

The cocktail list runs from the negroni through the sours to alcohol-free versions, and the desserts come from the house's own pâtisserie: beside the crème brûlée a tiramisu with salted caramel, a chocolate fondant, a cake of the day and "El Colonel", vodka over lemon sorbet.

On the Cala Ratjada harbourfront

Cala Ratjada is the easternmost town on Mallorca, and Passeig Colom is its harbour promenade; Le Seazon sits in the middle of it, a few steps from the water. Live music plays regularly in the evening, and the terrace looks out over the marina and the sea. The house works to the season: it opens in spring, sees the autumn out with a closing party and shuts over the winter. If you want a table right by the water, book ahead — the house takes reservations through a booking system of its own.