Culinary trails with the spice of controversy

Paul Richardson develops a taste for the slow food movement and the colourful history of Menorca

Asalty breeze crept in through the open window. I sat in the bright sun at a wooden schoolroom table at Can Bernat des Grau, a rustic restaurant with whitewashed walls with the posters of fish species, and the Sunday-lunch clatter of locals who knew a good thing when they tasted it. While I waited for my chargrilled whole sea bream – brought in that morning on the family’s own boat – I got busy with a bowl of the sweetest, juiciest prawns I’d eaten in a while.

What is Menorca known for? This gorgeous and still underappreciated Spanish island has several claims to fame: its unspoilt beaches, surely among the Med’s most beautiful, and its impressive panoply of Neolithic remains, scattered among the rocks and vegetation, being two of them.

As a foodie destination, however, Menorca has never been exactly hot to trot. In culinary terms, as in other ways, the smaller Balearic stood in the shadow of its bolder, brassier neighbour, Mallorca, and tended to suffer in the comparison.

The island’s ambitious and successful bid for the title of European Region of Gastronomy 2022 is a sign of just how completely things have changed. Menorca now has a food scene that rivals anywhere in Spain – and in many ways trumps that of its big-sister island. Excellence in restaurants here means both fizzingly contemporary cuisine and old-time Menorcan food such as lobster stew, stuffed aubergines and oliaigo (a summer tomato soup commonly eaten with fresh figs).

Much of the current excitement, however, has to do with the island as a source of raw materials. Prime among these is the fish and shellfish, much of it caught on small boats from managed fishing grounds off Menorca’s north coast. Cow’s-milk Mahón cheese is perhaps the island’s most prestigious ingredient, closely followed by beef from the Menorcan red cow, which once hovered on the grass verge of extinction. In recent years, olive oil and wine, neither of which have been produced commercially on the island in living memory, have come back on to the menu.

Base camp for my food safari would be Torralbenc, the glorious countryhouse hotel that brought pared-down, rustic chic to an island where such a concept was previously unknown. Torralbenc turned out to be a good primer for the new Menorcan food and wine: the in-house restaurant made good use of local langoustines and sobrassada, a finely milled pork sausage cured with rust-red pimentón, while the 10-hectare vineyard surrounding the property, one of the largest of the new arrivals, was doing great things with classy varieties such as viognier, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc.

My appetite turned up to “high”, I embarked on a voyage around the rich and sometimes enigmatic palette of the island’s flavours. It was autumn and the fields and woods gave off balsamic fragrances of camomile, rosemary and pine. One dew-drenched morning I set off with Lucia, of Farmer’s Way, a foodtourism outfit that lays on visits to artisan food producers, to a series of farmhouses in the rolling countryside of the interior. At one of these farms I watched Pedro Marquès and his family at work on their prize-winning artisan Binillubet cheese, made from the unpasteurised milk of their own cows. A few miles away at another whitewashed farmhouse, I met Italian expat Omar Zola, whose island-grown saffron has been wowing chefs across the island and beyond. Like wine and olive oil, saffron had not been produced here for centuries, said Zola, and his project marked the beginning of a renaissance.

There may have been no wine in premodern Menorca, but there was certainly plenty of gin. At the old Xoriguer distillery in Mahon harbour, I learnt about the island’s love-affair with this legacy of British colonial rule and its still egregious role in local life. Maria, who showed me around, regaled me with anecdotes about the three generations of the Pons Justo family who still run Xoriguer, and about the brand’s iconic bottles, whose curious ring at the top was originally designed to be hooked to the belts of sailors. Offering me a shot of pomada, a refreshing combo of gin and fresh lemonade, Maria explained this was Menorca’s tipple of choice especially in high summer, when neighbours make up batches at home and drink little else during the island’s mad midsummer fiestas of San Juan.

What I found as I traversed the island’s wineries and dairies, its pastryshops and tapas bars, suggested its status as a prime European gastro-zone was well-deserved. The cooking at Mon and Smoix, Ca na Pilar and Sa Pedrera, was as thrillingly up-to-date as anywhere in Madrid or Barcelona, yet even at restaurants that didn’t aspire to alta cocina the standard seemed high.

Notable among the top 10 dishes of my Menorcan journey were the stuffed squid at Mon, a local classic deconstructed; and David de Coca’s radical take on the lobster stew caldereta de llagosta, which I tried one lunchtime at Sa Llagosta in Fornells, way up on the wild north coast. De Coca’s version of this famous dish was all about the fabulously intense stock – pure seafood umami – with just a meaty chunk or two of lobster to remind you of its origins.

My drives across the island’s delectable landscape were taking me down some unexpected culinary back roads. There were Moorish echoes in the use of figs and almonds, the medieval mixtures of fruit with meat. A British influence was also detectable. A local plum variety, the Neversó, was reportedly given its name by British governor Richard Kane (1662-1736) who claimed that such sweet fruit “I never saw”. The words grevi (gravy) and piquel (pickle) still form part of the local food vocabulary. The cega amb cóc at Ca N’Aguedet, a temple of traditional Menorcan cookery where 95-year old Agueda Vadell only recently retired from the stoves, was in essence an English game pie.

There was diversity, then, but one preparation was ubiquitous: the sauce that the rest of the world calls mayonnaise, and Menorca calls mahonesa. I’d encountered it in one guise or another at almost every meal, dots and dabs and lavish bowlfuls of it, flavoured with everything from garlic and herbs to quince, curry, and pimentón.

Hereby hangs a culinary tale spiced with controversy. The standard theory of mayonnaise holds that it was created by the Duke de Richelieu, great-nephew of the more famous cardinal, who apparently found the local garlic-based allioli too piquant for his refined tastes, swapped the garlic for egg yolk, and the rest is history and Hellmann’s.

Next day, however, the plot thickened along with the mayonnaise. I had been invited by Sion Bosch, of pioneering food-tourism outfit Cómete Menorca, to a workshop and tasting at Son Felip, a spectacular country estate in the island’s windswept north where fashion magnate Manel Adell has set about planting olive trees to make a piquant, fruity olive oil – one of the first of the new generation. A gleaming, green-gold emulsion rose under a drib

Where to eat

Please note that, as we went to press, these restaurants and hotels were closed because of the pandemic. Please check the websites and phone numbers for details of when they will reopen.

Torralbenc

Country House Hotel,

Ctra Maó-Cala’n

Porter km10, Alaior (torralbenc.com)

Can Bernat des Grau,

Ctra Fornells 77, Mahón (facebook.com/ canbernatdesgraumenorca)

Món, Paseo San

Nicolás 4, Ciutadella

(0034 971 38 17 18)

Smoix, Avinguda Jaume Conqueridor 38,

Ciudadela (smoix.com)

Sa Llagosta,

Calle Gabriel Gelabert 12, Fornells (0034 971 37 65 66)

Ca N’Aguedet,

Calle Lepanto 30, Es Mercadal (0034 971 37 53 91)

Passio Mediterrania,

Moll de Llevant 298, Mahón (passiomed.com)

Alcaufar Vell Rural

Hotel, Ctra Alcalfar km8, San Luis (alcaufarvell.com)

Ulisses, Plaça de la Llibertat 22,

Ciutadella ( joancanals bartender.com)

TOURS AND TASTINGS

Cómete Menorca (cometemenorca.com)

Farmers Way (farmersandco.es)

Bodegas Binifadet Wines(binifadet.com)

Xoriguer Gin (xoriguer.es)

Cuina

Overseas holidays are currently subject to restrictions. See Page 3