Things to do in Palma de Mallorca are easy to find. A cathedral visit, a marina walk, a dinner somewhere with a good view of the sea. All of it is worthwhile. But if you are staying in a private villa with a terrace, a garden and an afternoon with nowhere to be, there is a version of Mallorca available to you that most visitors never get close to.
I am Guillermo Bermell. I grew up in Valencia, moved to Mallorca in 2005, and have been cooking paella on this island for over 25 years. I have cooked in hotel kitchens and village gardens, on yachts and in villa courtyards, for small families and for large groups who had never seen a proper paella made over fire before. What follows is my honest list of the things worth doing in Palma and across the island: the ones that stay with people long after they have left.
Paella cooked at your villa
The thing I do most often, and the thing people seem to value most, is simply this: I come to wherever you are staying, set up the pan and the fire in your outdoor space, and cook a paella while your group gathers around. You can find out more on the Paella Lover At Home page, but the experience is easier to describe than to find on a website.
I arrive with everything needed. The pan, the fire, the ingredients sourced that morning. I start cooking while your group has drinks nearby. People drift over as the smells begin: olive oil warming, sofrito deepening, saffron turning the stock gold. There are questions. There are stories. The cooking takes about ninety minutes, and by the time we eat, the group has already had a very good afternoon.
The socarrat forms at the bottom in the final minutes. That is the caramelised crust that every Valencian argues over, the sign that the paella was cooked with patience and the right amount of heat. We scrape it up and eat straight from the pan. I have done this hundreds of times and it never gets old.
A villa in Mallorca is a beautiful thing to have. This is one of the best ways I know to use it.
Learning to cook it yourself
Some groups want to make the paella rather than watch it being made. Our Paella Lover School sessions can come to your villa: I guide everyone through the process from the sofrito to the socarrat, over a real fire, with the group doing the actual cooking.
Paella asks more of you than most dishes. The techniques are specific, the timing matters, and you have to resist the instinct to interfere with the pan when the rice is working. Getting it right is genuinely satisfying. Everyone leaves with a certificate of completion, which sounds minor but is something people seem to like having.
It is a good afternoon for a group who want to do something together rather than just be in the same place at the same time.
Mercat de l’Olivar before nine in the morning
Palma’s main covered market is where the city’s cooks do their shopping. Go before nine on a weekday and you will find it full of professionals and retired locals who have been coming to the same stalls for decades. Go at eleven and you will find tourists.
The difference is not just atmosphere. At eight in the morning the vendors have more time, more interest in conversation, and more willingness to let you taste something. You learn more about Mallorcan food in an hour there than in a week of restaurant meals.
When I cook at a villa, I usually visit the market that morning to choose ingredients based on what looks best rather than following a fixed list. If you want to come along, it changes the meal in a way that is hard to explain until you have done it. We have written a little about this in our post on the best paella in Palma.
The old town before the crowds
Palma’s old town is genuinely extraordinary. The cathedral, the Arab baths, the medieval streets around the Almudaina: it holds up to close attention in a way that not every historic city does. But it belongs to the early morning.
Before nine, the streets are quiet enough to hear your own footsteps. The bakeries are open and the ensaimada is fresh. The light on the stone is different in the first hours of the day. This is the version of the old town that people who live here know, and it requires nothing except getting up a little earlier than you planned.
Eating with the seasons
One of the things that makes cooking in Mallorca interesting is how seasonal the island’s food still is. The best ingredients here are genuinely tied to the time of year in a way that has become rare in most of Europe. It is part of why, as villa holidays in Mallorca have grown among discerning travellers, the food has become a reason to visit rather than just something that happens while you are here.
Spring brings artichokes and the first good prawns. Summer is tomatoes, fresh fish, and the long afternoon paellas that the island’s climate was made for. Autumn turns earthier: wild mushrooms from the Tramuntana, game, the new season’s olive oil. Winter slows everything down and deepens the cooking accordingly.
A paella made in October with autumn mushrooms and fresh olive oil is a different meal to one made in July with the best of the summer’s seafood. If you come back to Mallorca in different seasons, as many people do, this is one of the reasons the island never quite repeats itself.
On the value of cooking in someone’s home
I have cooked in a lot of settings over the years. Hotels, restaurants, festival tents, yacht decks. The ones I find most satisfying are private homes and villas, because the dynamic is different.
There is no service industry transaction happening. People are relaxed in a way they are not always relaxed in a restaurant. The conversation is better. The meal goes at its own pace. When the socarrat is ready, everyone is already there, already invested, already part of it.
If you are staying in a villa in Mallorca and the idea of a paella afternoon appeals, get in touch through the At Home page and we will work out the details together. There is no fixed format. It always depends on the group, the space and the day.
Until next time,
HAPPY PAELLA!!
— Guillermo Bermell
