To my mind, there aren’t many places that combine really great food with a really great view. I can think of a place on Lake Garda, a pub in Cumbria, a seafood restaurant in Bournemouth, another on top of a block of flats in Calais and a couple of others. But they are few and far between. Usually, I find there’s a trade off – one wins over the other and that’s the case with the Mirador. The views are faultless – the clear blue water, dotted with small boats, stretching out to Pollensa in the distance, much nearer is the rugged landscape of the Formentor peninsula.
The food is less than perfect but that shouldn’t put you off taking the drive. It really is a pleasant way to spend an hour or so over lunch.
There’s good bread – the chewy “pan integral and good local olives – the ones they just crack and leave to infuse with the flavours – here it’s salt and fennel.
Salads were disappointing. For a “green salad”, nothing more had been done than open a supermarket pillow pack and dump a handful on the plate. For the “mixed” version, a hard under-ripe tomato had been added, along with a spoonful of tinned corn and a slice or two of onion and cucumber – and half an egg that had been hard boiled for so long it was unpleasantly rubbery.
Grilled sole brought a goodly sized fillet. Perfectly cooked, the flesh just flaking away from the bone. Alongside, a little fried courgette and a couple of boiled potatoes. Or, to be more precise, almost boiled potatoes – undercooked, still hard and not edible. Luckily, life’s companion had already got well stuck into the bread so diodnt go hungry for carbs.
I always think of shoulder of lamb as the Mallorcan equivalent of the British pub classic of Lamb Henry. Maybe like most pubs, they buy it in frozen from the catering wholesaler and warm it up in the microwave or as “boil in the bag”. Certainly here, it was “pull it apart with a fork” tender, but tasting of very not very much. It was OK, in the way that Lamb Henry can be from time to time. At least my spuds were cooked through – in fact they were the best thing on the plate. 2cm cubes, deep fried to a lovely crispness and tasting of, well, tasting just of potato.
Main courses are around the €15 mark with starters a bit less than half that. And, for all its faults, I’d rather be eating lunch there than a Lamb Henry in a dreary pub in Macclesfield.