One of Palma’s most well-known restaurants is without a doubt La Boveda; it was mentioned in almost every article or travel guide I read on Palma. Only a street away is their sister restaurant, Taberna de la Boveda, who has an identical menu.
My guess is that the first restaurant was so popular it made sense to open a second one. We ate at the Taberna and sat on their lovely patio with most of the other guests. It wasn’t a warm evening but the patio was so cosy everyone still wanted to sit there. And of course, we started our meal with a bottle of cava.
I can’t make my mind up about this restaurant. Some things I really like and others I really don’t. But I must mention our fabulous waiter. He was so on the ball, always smiling, always making sure we had a nice time and everything we wanted, while still being very efficient and diligent. I can honestly say we didn’t have such good service at any other time during our week in Palma. The Spanish mentality is just very different from the Swedish and in a way it was nice to just switch off and go with the slow service and more waiting time even if it was a little irritating at the same time.
This evening my parents were a little tired of tapas, so we only had two tapas to start and then a main course each. Daddy had the chorizo cooked in wine which completely lacked seasoning and oomph and he was rather disappointed.
The sweet juicy melon and delicious salty Iberico ham that mummy and I shared was far better. Super simple of course but good produce.
For our maincourses daddy and I chose meat. His was a slightly overcooked beef fillet. It was more medium-well than the medium desired but still very tasty. And the green peppercorn sauce was outstanding.
Mother had fried gambas with garlic and a side of chips. The prawns were delicious and sweet and the chips unfortunately a bit soggy.
I had the sirloin, also over-cooked; it was medium-well when I had ordered it rare, but the blue cheese sauce was delicious. Again, the chips could have been crispier but I liked the addition of padron peppers.
For pudding we shared a crème caramel and this cake with an unknown name. It was not made at the restaurant but still nice. It had an almond base, sweet lemon mousse and soft meringue on top.
All the food, bar the chorizo, was very tasty and the service great, yet I’m not all that thrilled about this place. If that was because it felt a bit touristy (no local guests at all), or because the cooking was a bit hit and miss I don’t know. Maybe it was partly our fault for not sticking to tapas, but then again that chorizo was a tapas dish. And in my mind every pub and restaurant worth its name should be able to make proper chips/fries.
Regardless, we still had a nice evening here but there are other restaurants in Palma I would rather go back to than Taberna de la Boveda.
Taberna de la Boveda, Paseo Sagrera, 3, La Lonja, Palma
Scandelights 