During my first trip exploring Menorca's most beautiful beaches, I based myself at Can Sastre boutique hotel in the quaint town of Ciutadella, from where I'd drive off each day to look for hidden beaches and the island's mysterious ancient stone structures. I fell absolutely in love with the place and the laid-back vibes of the Balearics, so when I returned the following year, I booked a beautiful room at Mahon’s prettiest townhouse hotel, Can Alberti hotel, and made it my mission to discover the most amazing tapas in Mahon, the island's capital. Here are my recommendations for incredible tapas you really don't want to miss.
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| Burrata salad at Anna & Pepe |
Anna & Pepe (12 Carrer Bon Aire)
I found this brilliant and friendly restaurant set back along a cobbled street, just moments away from the town house hotel of Can Alberti. There are just a handful of tables outside Anna & Pepe, but the dishes are numerable and very, very tasty. My friend and I ordered plates to share, among them were a salad of burrata, the best patatas bravas we’ve ever eaten with the creamist garlic sauce to swirl through, tuna tartare with guacamole that reminded me of dishes I ate at the best restaurants in Lima, huge green olives, iberico jamón croquetas and finally, a courgette, dried tomato and Mahon cheese salad that turned out to be just heavenly. In all honesty we ordered one plate too many and couldn’t even finish the tuna and guacamole, but the desire was strong, such was the deliciousness of every dish. We shared a bottle of sangria and delighted in each plate as it arrived, taking photos of the pretty dishes, some topped with edible lilac and pink flowers. Including service charge the meal and drinks came to around 80€ ($82), well worth the expense as this meal turned out to be one of the best from our week-long stay in Menorca.
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| Patatas bravas, olives and iberico ham croquettes at Anna & Pepe |
Asorbos (115 Moll de Llevant)
On the walk from the old town to Mahon’s harbour we found Asorbos, a restaurant that’s always busy well into the night and beyond. We hadn’t booked a table, but after adding our names to a wait list, we managing to get a table outside about 15 minutes later. Another night of tapas, this time we ordered a sharing plate of charred pardon peppers, fresh glimmering anchovies in a tangy vinaigrette, Caprese salad and a goats cheese and apple salad, accompanied by endless cold glasses of bubbling cava. The service and food isn’t quite on par with Anna & Pepe but was still delicious and quite reasonably priced, coming in at just over 50€ ($51) for everything including service.
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| Caprese and goats cheese salads at Asorbos |
Mercat des Peix (Mahon fish market - 1 Plaza de España)
Just before you get to the road and steps that lead from Mahon’s old town to the seafront is a lively fish market that sells freshly caught fish in the mornings, yet has a huge tapas selection by night. The speciality here is pintxos, small pieces of bread topped with a variety of delights from dates and jamón, or cod with mustard, to the obscure but delicious prawn stuffed calamari, and all are super reasonable in price coming in a 2€ to 4€ ($2-4) for one piece. There’s also a bar selling a large selection of wine by the glass or bottle, we opted for a bottle of prosecco and spent our entire evening sampling different pintxos and talking the night away. While the market doesn’t offer the best food you’ll ever eat in Mahon, it’s a typically Spanish tradition to eat pintxos and the outdoor environment makes it all the more enjoyable.
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| Pintxos at Mahon's Mercat des Peix |
El Rosario de la Aurora (18 Carrer del Rosari)
Another restaurant very close to Can Alberti, and proving once again that the best restaurants are the ones hidden away from the seafront is El Rosario de la Aurora and the beautiful tapas and desserts they serve everyday, bar Tuesdays. The food here was so good and our appetites so huge that we managed to eat and drink everything without taking a single photo of the food. Here we tried kalamata olives, amazing 00 anchovies from Cantabria served with fresh tomato topped bread, a plate of mouth-watering jamón ibérico, tortilla and a delightful Rosario salad, made up of lamb’s lettuce, foie gras, goat’s cheese and red fruit vinaigrette. I never really opt for dessert, preferring savoury selections over sweet, and if I do opt for dessert it’s never cheesecake but the waiter tempted me so with his divine description of their homemade cheesecake and before I knew it, I was swooning over the most deliciously rich cheesecake my mouth had ever tasted. I don’t believe there was a dessert menu so I can’t even say what the flavour was but there was definitely some kind of red berry compote in the bottom of the bowl. As we paid the check, which came to just under 65€($67), including glasses of wine and amaretto, we were given complementary shots of an icy lemon liquor that went down all too easily before the friendliest waiter in Mahon gifted us with our very own Mahon-branded shot glasses to take home—a cute reminder of the very brilliant El Rosario de la Aurora and their bloody great cheesecake wizardry.
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