Last week I was luckily enough to spend a long weekend in Menorca. I've travelled a lot this year (Japan, Paris, Greece and the Isles of Scilly) but they've all either been for work or felt like work. My lovely few days in Menorca were the most relaxing holiday I've had in a long time. Decisions revolved around swimming pool or beach, BBQing or eating out, and drinking beer, cocktails or wine! I didn't have to think, as my wonderful friend Lucy knows the island (and me) so well that anything she suggested we do ended up being the best option possible. It was absolute bliss.
We were staying in Son Rosas villa, which is on the edge of Es Migjorn Gran. It's a stunning villa which sleeps up to 8, has a pool (which became home to Fabio the inflatable Flamingo, who was promptly renamed Beaky by Lucy's mate's 3 year old), stunning gardens with all different types of fruit trees, and four different outside eating/chilling/drinking areas.
I arrived a day after Julie, on the Thursday, which was Lucy's birthday, so after a quick supermarket sweep we headed back to the villa, toasted our hostess with the mostess's birthday, and I rustled up a lunch spread of local cheeses and meats, avocado, tomatoes that taste so much like tomato you don't want to eat the ones back in England when you get home, and other nibbly bits to see us through an afternoon at the beach.
For dinner we headed to Ciutadela, one of the main towns, that's on the west coast of the island, to Café Balear, which is *the* best place to go for the island's top notch seafood. A queue for the outside tables snaked up the cobbled path along the marina, so we headed inside to find the table Lucy had booked for us. We actually ended up sitting outside, but through the back of the restaurant, in the outside courtyard. If you go to Café Balear then I'd recommend doing this too - yes, you don't get the views of the marina, but you're guaranteed a table and you don't have to wait in a queue. We ordered a ridiculous amount of food and gorged on clams, mussels, chipirones, huge prawns, less delicious sea urchin, and massive cataplana of Menorcan speciality Caldereta which is a lobster bisque stew. Absolutely delicious, though very rich and filling! We rolled out of the restaurant and wandered round the little street stalls, making slightly tipsy, yet seemingly sensible purchases...!
The rest of our days were spent flopping between pool, lunch spreads, local beaches - of which San Tomas were our preferred spots - and BBQs and meals out. We went into Mahon one day to buy fish for a BBQ and found a wonderful little tapas market attached to the main fish market. I'm not sure of the opening hours but think it's more a weekend place. You can order your food from each stall, along with some beers and sit at tables between the food and fish market in the sunshine listening to music. We had avocado topped toasts with gloriously oily mussels, oysters straight from their shells, melt in the mouth bellota jamon, anchovy wrapped olives and ice cold beers.
I picked up a snapper, a bream and some king prawns that I drenched in/stuffed with parsley and garlic and chucked on the BBQ that evening.
One evening we headed into Es Migjorn for dinner at the most modern restaurant we ate at all holiday - Ca Na Pilar. The food was generally very good, though there were a couple of dud dishes, including Julie's not quite cooked cod and egg combo for mains. Highlights though included a starter of mountain and sea carpaccio - raw prawn thinly sliced and topped with lardo, and my foie pate coated in brioche breadcrumbs and served with pear and pistachio. My main of tuna with wasabi mayo and lime "air" was the least Spanish thing I ate all week but was divine, and expertly cooked and assembled. The tarte tatin for pudding was pretty special too.
We finished our holiday with a trek to the beach, via a beautiful inland cave, through woodlands and along rickety pathways, which finally plonked us on to the island's nudist beach in desperate need of a swim to cool off (though my ridiculous sunburn from the day before meant I couldn't actually go in the water as my skin would've probably all fallen off!!)
Menorca is a new favourite and absolutely firmly on my go-back-to list. It's super chilled, still has lots of lovely traditional restaurants, bars and cafes but is also getting the modern touch from places like Ca Na Pilar and the tapas market in Mahon. It's small enough that you can feel like you've covered most of the island in a week, but not so small that you run out of places to go, and being only 2 hours flight from Gatwick and now Heathrow, it's worth popping over even just for a long weekend.
We were staying in Son Rosas villa, which is on the edge of Es Migjorn Gran. It's a stunning villa which sleeps up to 8, has a pool (which became home to Fabio the inflatable Flamingo, who was promptly renamed Beaky by Lucy's mate's 3 year old), stunning gardens with all different types of fruit trees, and four different outside eating/chilling/drinking areas.
I arrived a day after Julie, on the Thursday, which was Lucy's birthday, so after a quick supermarket sweep we headed back to the villa, toasted our hostess with the mostess's birthday, and I rustled up a lunch spread of local cheeses and meats, avocado, tomatoes that taste so much like tomato you don't want to eat the ones back in England when you get home, and other nibbly bits to see us through an afternoon at the beach.
For dinner we headed to Ciutadela, one of the main towns, that's on the west coast of the island, to Café Balear, which is *the* best place to go for the island's top notch seafood. A queue for the outside tables snaked up the cobbled path along the marina, so we headed inside to find the table Lucy had booked for us. We actually ended up sitting outside, but through the back of the restaurant, in the outside courtyard. If you go to Café Balear then I'd recommend doing this too - yes, you don't get the views of the marina, but you're guaranteed a table and you don't have to wait in a queue. We ordered a ridiculous amount of food and gorged on clams, mussels, chipirones, huge prawns, less delicious sea urchin, and massive cataplana of Menorcan speciality Caldereta which is a lobster bisque stew. Absolutely delicious, though very rich and filling! We rolled out of the restaurant and wandered round the little street stalls, making slightly tipsy, yet seemingly sensible purchases...!
The rest of our days were spent flopping between pool, lunch spreads, local beaches - of which San Tomas were our preferred spots - and BBQs and meals out. We went into Mahon one day to buy fish for a BBQ and found a wonderful little tapas market attached to the main fish market. I'm not sure of the opening hours but think it's more a weekend place. You can order your food from each stall, along with some beers and sit at tables between the food and fish market in the sunshine listening to music. We had avocado topped toasts with gloriously oily mussels, oysters straight from their shells, melt in the mouth bellota jamon, anchovy wrapped olives and ice cold beers.
I picked up a snapper, a bream and some king prawns that I drenched in/stuffed with parsley and garlic and chucked on the BBQ that evening.
One evening we headed into Es Migjorn for dinner at the most modern restaurant we ate at all holiday - Ca Na Pilar. The food was generally very good, though there were a couple of dud dishes, including Julie's not quite cooked cod and egg combo for mains. Highlights though included a starter of mountain and sea carpaccio - raw prawn thinly sliced and topped with lardo, and my foie pate coated in brioche breadcrumbs and served with pear and pistachio. My main of tuna with wasabi mayo and lime "air" was the least Spanish thing I ate all week but was divine, and expertly cooked and assembled. The tarte tatin for pudding was pretty special too.
We finished our holiday with a trek to the beach, via a beautiful inland cave, through woodlands and along rickety pathways, which finally plonked us on to the island's nudist beach in desperate need of a swim to cool off (though my ridiculous sunburn from the day before meant I couldn't actually go in the water as my skin would've probably all fallen off!!)
Menorca is a new favourite and absolutely firmly on my go-back-to list. It's super chilled, still has lots of lovely traditional restaurants, bars and cafes but is also getting the modern touch from places like Ca Na Pilar and the tapas market in Mahon. It's small enough that you can feel like you've covered most of the island in a week, but not so small that you run out of places to go, and being only 2 hours flight from Gatwick and now Heathrow, it's worth popping over even just for a long weekend.
Looks like you had a fab time. It doesn't look like commercialised either. x
ReplyDeleteWe certainly did! It's so lovely and uncommercial there. I want to go back so much!!
DeleteRosie xx