Pasta e Pesto is a small Italian restaurant on the Plaça del Mercat in the middle of Palma, and everything here revolves around pasta made on the premises. The menu fits on a single page: you pick a pasta shape, you pick a sauce, done. The plainness is deliberate, not a shortage of ideas.
Behind the stove stands Costantino Manca, whom everyone here calls Costa. He comes from Sardinia, trained at a cookery school and then lived for many years in Hamburg, where he ran his own Italian place in the St. Georg district. Then love moved him to the island. His restaurant on the Plaça del Mercat has been open since 2023.
Costa makes the pasta dough himself every morning, and he does the cooking as well. The room is small, and some of the seats are at a counter looking straight into the open kitchen. So you can watch what happens to your portion, and that is part of the pleasure here.
Four pasta shapes, five pesto sauces
The choice is Spaghetti, Casarecce, Maccheroni and Pappardelle. The base is a particular organic durum wheat semolina, sémola rimacinata, which Costa sources through a specialist supplier along with a few other Italian ingredients. Whatever else he needs, he buys at the market.
Costa calls all of his sauces pesto, even though not every one of them is a pesto in the strict sense. The classic version brings together basil, pine nuts and parmesan. The Pesto Trapanese is Sicilian in character, with fresh tomatoes, almonds, basil and parmesan. A third works with dried tomatoes, parmesan and hazelnut, a fourth with courgette, pine nuts, parmesan and king prawns. There is also a version with rocket, parmesan and almonds.
The most singular of them is the carbonara. It arrives with egg and parmesan, but instead of guanciale it is Mallorcan sobrassada from the black pig that goes into the pan. That is the point where the menu reaches across from Italy to the island. A further sauce often stands beside them as the one of the day.
Starters, dessert and the wine
Costa himself would manage without starters and desserts, but guests want both, so both exist, in a small and changing selection. Vitello tonnato turns up there, as does burrata with rocket and cherry tomatoes, or a beetroot tartare. Tiramisù is the fixture at the end.
With wine, Costa likes to stay close to where he comes from. The house wine comes from a bodega in Friuli whose people he knows personally. Alongside it the list carries Italian, Mallorcan, Spanish and French bottles. Italian music plays from the speakers, and Costa often sings along while he cooks. He really was a singer once, and he still has a good voice.
Pasta e Pesto on the Plaça del Mercat
The Plaça del Mercat sits in the heart of the old town, a few steps from the Passeig del Born and from La Rambla, on one of those corners of Palma you walk through anyway. The place is usually full, the regulars know one another, and Costa still finds a moment for a few words however busy it gets.
As a lunch between two sights the format is ideal: little to choose from, fresh pasta, no fuss. In the evening it turns into a place for people who know exactly that they want pasta and nothing else. If you are coming as a group, bear the small room in mind and ask ahead.
Facilities & services
Accessibility
- Entrance
- Restroom
- Seating
Payment
- Credit card
- Debit card
- Contactless
Service
- Takeout
- Dine-in
Good for
- Groups
