Menorcan Cuisine

About Menorcan Cuisine

By the ULTIMATE Menorca Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

The cooking of the Balearic Islands is a resourceful branch of Mediterranean cuisine, shaped by island life, Catalan roots and old trade routes. On Menorca it means the island’s celebrated cheese, its lobster stew and the fish of its coves. This is our guide to the island’s dishes.

Balearic cuisine

The cooking of the Balearic Islands is a distinct, resourceful branch of Mediterranean cuisine, shaped by island isolation, Catalan roots and centuries of trade. Pork, garden vegetables, fresh fish and good bread are its foundations; on Menorca, add the island’s great cheese and its lobster.

Mahón-Menorca cheese

Formatge de Maó is Menorca’s pride: a cow’s milk cheese, white to deep yellow as it ages, with a sharp, salty and buttery flavour that islanders credit to the sea salt carried by the wind onto the pastures. It is protected by its own designation of origin, Mahón-Menorca, and comes young (tierno), semi-cured or aged; try it with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprig of rosemary.

Sea-salted pastures, a lobster stew in a clay pot and, so the story goes, the birth of mayonnaise.

Caldereta de llagosta

The island’s celebrated lobster stew, cooked slowly in a clay pot. Its base is a fine sofrito of onion, tomato and garlic, thickened with a picada of almonds, garlic, parsley and the lobster’s liver, and it is eaten with thin slices of crisp bread. The fishing village of Fornells, on the north coast, is famous for it.

Mahonesa

Mayonnaise, so the story goes, was born in Maó: the tale tells that it reached France after the French took the town in 1756, and took the name “mahonnaise”. Food historians still debate it, but on Menorca the allioli and mahonesa are made with pride.

Pa amb oli and arròs brut

As on Mallorca, the everyday dish is pa amb oli, country bread rubbed with garlic and tomato and drizzled with olive oil, topped with cheese or cured meats. In winter, arròs brut, “dirty rice”, is a soupy rice with game, mushrooms and warm spices.

Where to taste it

In Maó, browse the fish market, the Mercat des Peix, and the market in the Claustre del Carme, both in this guide; the Consell Regulador of Mahón-Menorca cheese, also listed, explains the cheese and its makers. For the island’s produce cooked with flair, La Cocina de Cristine, in this guide, is where the young Menorcan chef Pau Sintes cooks Menorca’s fish and vegetables.

Our advice: buy an aged Mahón-Menorca cheese to take home, and keep one long lunch for a caldereta by the sea.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Menorcan Cuisine before you go.