Ibiza’s Best Restaurants (Originally published in a Mixmag Ibiza guide in summer 2008.)

If eating out in Ibiza calls to mind McDonalds, pizza or chicken-and-chips it’s time to spread your culinary wings and discover the island’s eateries. From cosy country restaurants to luxurious seaside fish shacks Ibiza has memorable dining for every taste. From the hills of Sant Rafael to the white beaches of Formentera, we’ve unearthed Ibiza’s finest restaurants. Buen approveche….

Es Xarcu, Cala Es Xarcu, Porroig, 971 187 867
A case of “more than meets the eye” Es Xarcu is a seriously luxurious (and pricy) restaurant masquerading as a casual beach shack. The clue is in the fact it is more easily accessible by yacht than by car - and in the opulant villas on the cliffs above. Try the meltingly fresh fish, the gallo de San Pedro cooked in white wine sauce is a favourite.
Best bit: Lecooaning back and sparking one of their expensive cigars while you ogle the floating palaces of the rich and famous.

La Paloma

La Paloma, Sant Llorenc 971 325 543
There are pizza places by the dozen but La Paloma, in the quant village of Sant Llorenc, is where locals go for genuine Italian cooking. Bright, airy and rich in charming details (the heart-shaped backs of the white wooden chairs, the candle-lit garden) it is an ideal peak-season alternative to buzzing seaside dining.
Best bit: If you or your guest is vegetarian La Paloma’s organic vegetable garden and amiable attitude make this an unusually welcoming experience.

Cafe Macao, Santa Gertrudis 971 197 835
There are two Cafe Macao’s in Ibiza and most websites still point you to the location at the end of the harbour in Ibiza Town. However, the original owners have taken their expertise and loyal following to the countrified comfort of the it-crowd’s new favourite village, Santa Gertrudis, whose homey comfort is the perfect setting for their refined Italian cuisine.
Best bit: The cosy decor has been lovingly sourced by the owners over the years - every piece has a story.

Click here to continue reading our selection of the top 20 Ibiza restaurants

Ibiza has a well-earned reputation for its stunning beaches and thriving club scene, but there is more to tease your senses here than just sight and sound. With Ryanair offering direct flights from London, there has never been a better time to experience the full glory of sensual Ibiza - sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. During the next few months we’ll be highlighting some of the unique seasonal delights of Ibiza. Starting with… scent

Scent is perhaps the most evocative sense, powerfully recalling moments and memories. During the summer the hot caress of the Mediterranean sun picks out whisper-soft notes of Ibiza’s summer flowers and chalky pink dust. But as the days shorten and the pace of life slows the rich olfactory tapestry of the island reveals its boldest hues.

A morning stroll along the shoreline is ripe with the brine of woolly brown banks of posidonia (sea grass), thrown up from the airless salt heart of the sea. It can be overpowering, at times, until relieved by the keen, mineral edge of the waves. Cooler, humid evenings are the perfect time to appreciate Ibiza’s limey, long-needled pines and the robust evergreen notes of its native shrubs.

The seaside is as refreshing as good cologne; inland the primal odours of wood, earth and fruit dominate. Gnarled carob pods cast off a putrid-sweetish smell, punctuated with velvet notes of late-ripening figs and scattered wine-grapes drying on the vine. You may also catch the tang of wood smoke, or stumble upon two of the island’s edible treasures: anise and heady wild rosemary. Whatever you do, don’t rush from hotel to hire car to bar. Take time to breathe deeply - the complex scent of Ibiza will stay with you long after your winter tan has faded.

I am the worst sort of explorer, in that I am always stubbornly and vocally un-interested in something unless it’s something I’ve discovered.

True to form I have always publically yawned over Atlantis - Ibiza’s “secret” beach. The locals assure me it is no more or less than a rather nice beach and that’s good enough for me.

However, one of my best mates was over from London for the weekend. He’d found Atlantis on his last visit and - like any good evangelist - wasn’t going to let me off the hook till I’d found it too. So off we go in the hire car with a bottle of water, a camera and some sensible shoes.

Lucky it’s one of those glorious Mediterranean autumn days where the sky is hazy blue and the sun is a silky gold as melting butter.

The first leg of our hike takes us to the most incredible view of Es Vedra I’ve ever seen. I spin in dazed circles around the top of the lookout tower, as enchanted as Alice in Wonderland.

Next up, the fun stuff. A slip-slidey journey down towards a narrow spit of land. Jumping from rock to rock, skidding on loose gravel, occasionally grabbing onto an errant pine branch and clinging for dear life. Above us, climbers are traversing a proper cliff, brightly coloured ropes swaying in the light breeze as they call to each other. They are enviably calm.

I nearly panic when I have to shimmy down a couple of metres of sloping stone to reach the fabled pool at Atlantis. (The only thing I’m more afraid of than heights is spiders, or possibly vice versa, depending on the height and/or size of spider involved.)

When I stop hyperventilating and look around I am dumbfounded. Blunt columns of soft, oatmeal-coloured stone frame the opal sea. Tiny speckled fish dart above shallow, rectangular steps showing where indifferent rock was quarried into a pool. Stone cairns of various sizes are dotted around and swirling, primitive faces break the right-angle lines of earlier craftsmen.

Finally, I get it.

Over dinner with my housemate’s visiting parents I pull out the camera. “Have you heard about Atlantis? It’s this secret beach… It’s amazing…”

Yep. I’ve officially joined the ranks of the Atlantis bores!

If it’s allowed… a brief word of congratulation: uber-dance site Resident Advisor has highlighted Ibiza Now correspondent Cila Warncke’s Rave Nu World blog as it’s “blogtastic” choice of the week for the review of new London club matter. See… our words get everywhere.

View from the top

Ever since someone told me, last winter, that you can walk across the headland from the southern end of Playa d’en Bossa to Es Cavallet I’ve wanted to try it. No real opportunity arose until couple of weeks ago when my little brother was here, visiting from the States. We’d taken the bus to Salinas and walked across to meet friends at Es Cavallet. After a few hours flopped in the sun we were both too lazy to hurry back to catch the last bus from Salinas.

“You can walk around the other way, to Playa d’en Bossa,” I told him, “Fancy it?”

“Sure, why not?” he shrugged.

It was nearly 8PM and off we went, hopping over a low stone retaining wall to gain access to the first swell of rock and pine shrub. I was wearing a mini-skirt, bikini top and a pair of Havianas, beach bag slung over one shoulder. The first twenty minutes or so was pretty easy. I jumped from rock to rock, feet slipping slightly as sweat greased the soles of my feet.

Up we went over one hill to find ourselves on the edge of a 30 or 40 metre cliff, meaning we had to swing inland to circle the notch in the coastline. It was getting steeper, the brush denser. We clambered up to the top of the first big cove and stopped to look back - and down. The waning sun cast everything in a richer-than-normal hue, Technicoloring the inky sea and the dots of white sails on the horizon. For the first time ever, in all my years visiting and living in Ibiza, I felt connected to the wildness of the island. I wanted to stand there and listen to the curling of the waves against the rocks, to tasty the piney air.

On the other hand, as much as I wanted to hang around having Treasure Island fantasies, I didn’t want to be scrambling towards unknown drop-offs in the dark. “What’s the hurry?” my brother wondered aloud as I scampered down the next hill. (Nothing phases him: he has a rugged physical self-confidence inversely proportionate to my extreme cautiousness.)

“I don’t want to be here after dark,” I said.

“Oh, okay.” We trotted on.

A thin gold thread flashed in my peripheral vision. Stopped me dead. “Holy shit! That’s a big spider!” I gasped. I am cripplingly arachniphobic (I once refused to sleep in my room for a week after seeing a freakishly large spider there. My friend removed it but I was convinced there were more, lurking) and the mere thought I might have face-planted this giant critter’s home made me feel a bit queasy.

“Damn, I’m glad you’re in front. I would have walked right into that,” my brother said cheerfully. After picking up a stick and carefully testing the pathway I ducked beneath the giant web and proceeded with care. Apparently the wilds are big-spider central in Ibiza. We narrowly avoided a half-dozen more huge, artful spans flung between shrubs on the putative trail.

Whether or not there is a trail remains open to debate, I think we were following one because, from time to time rough, royal-blue triangles were daubed onto the rocks - a clue or guide of some sort. What they didn’t hint at was how near we were to Playa d’en Bossa. The sun sank low enough to render my shades unnecessary, and they got chucked in the bag in exchange for a vest top, which was quickly wringing with sweat. Sticker bushes and random branches snatched as we passed, sinking cuts into my bare ankles and weals across my upper arms.

One thing I hadn’t expected (apart from the spiders) was the wide variety of rock formations. After crossing expanses of big, smooth, reddish stone we would suddenly be slithering across grey, clay-like rock closely ridged. Ordinarily I am the least-curious of naturalists, but I wished then I knew more about rocks, enough to at least adequately describe then.

More remarkable still was the appearance, at the bottom of a deep cleft that took us right down to sea-level, and across a narrow gulch, of a dirt-bike rider. He nodded as he gunned his engine, mysteriously ascending the path we’d just skidded down.

“Where the hell did he come from?” we wondered. The next leg of the journey left us none the wiser. While there was a definite trail across some points we had to tramp through trackless brush before we finally ascended the hill that overlooks the pirate tower guarding the far end of Playa d’en Bossa beach.

It was almost twilight but we relaxed our pace, ambling down the flattening path toward the cove of boat houses at the end of the beach. Rather than follow the coastline to the bitter end we swung inland, doubling back through a stretch of woods and dirt road until we came out on the sand.

Families were packing their kids into four-wheel drives, wind-surfers putting up their boards, sunbathers sloping towards their hotels with towels flung carelessly over shoulders. It was a relief to put swollen, scraped, sweaty feet into the sea and I was reluctant to let the adventure end. So we traipsed on, through the gentle drift of evening light, all the way up Ibiza’s longest beach till we reached Figueretes.

We stopped off at the fabulous Il Vecchio Molina restaurant in Figureretes for homemade pasta and a bottle of white wine. Rarely has a meal felt more deserved or been more richly enjoyed.

It was a moment to make me fall in love with Ibiza all over again, too. A reminder that even at the height of August craziness this wonderful, multi-faceted island is full of delights just waiting to be discovered. It really is treasure island.

About to scale the mighty moutain

Desperately bored on a flight to London, I actually started reading those bits at the back of the EasyJet in-flight magazine which offer information and recommendation about their various destinations (and which I suspect only the terminally uninterested ever read). I expected to learn stuff that will probably never be of any use to me, i.e., that Wagner composed Parsifal in the Grand Hotel in Palermo and that it takes half an hour to get from Orly airport to central Paris by train.

I didn’t expect the advice in the Palma entry which reads: “If you still have some energy to burn after leaving Palma’s clubs at 6am, why not hop on the fast ferry at 8am to the neighbouring isle of Ibiza? You can then take a short taxi ride and experience one of the world’s best clubs, Space, open all day.”

Clearly news of the new after-hours restrictions hasn’t drifted as far as the ears of EasyJet correspondent David Anderson. More to the point, do you think news has drifted to the ears of the Ibicenco government that it was the glorious fun of daytime parties like Space, DC10 and Bora Bora that made Ibiza famous? And that for many visitors they were the whole point of a trip here?

“It is never too late to give up our prejudices,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. Little did I expect a nightclub to make his case.

Last year I swore off Privilege. One night too many being groped by Italians while wandering fruitlessly around the dancefloor in search of some atmosphere and I decided the World’s Largest Club isn’t for me. Give me the sweat-dripping walls of DC10 or Amnesia’s sci-fi splendour any day.

If it weren’t for my friends Helen and Nikki who are promoting hip-hop trio Sophisticated Funk (playing the second room) at SuperMartXe’s Friday night party I wouldn’t go anywhere near the place.

I do, though, but with vertically-challenged expectations. Especially after popping to Underground for a drink and discovering it’s empty at 2AM. Only walking up the road to Privilege do I realise something is happening. A traffic accident, I assume, from the massive tailback of cars trailing out of the drive and back down the carretera.

Pushing through palm fronds and pebbles towards the main entrance I can’t figure out what’s going on. There are these people, everywhere, scrambling through the underbrush, shouting at each other in Spanish or Italian, smoking, grumbling. “This isn’t the freaking queue?” I groan. Oh yes it is. Forty stifling, elbow-riddled minutes later my friends and I stumble out of the crush and through the entrance into another crush - a gloriously OTT swirl of bodies, lights, thumping house music and grinning faces.

SuperMartXe is reputedly a Madrileno gay night with a heavily Spanish following. In fact, it is completely mixed in every sense. And what a blinding show it makes: couples of every persuasion; gangs of friends chattering in a assorted languages as they struggle for space on the dancefloor; the white-hot blaze of the glittering SuperMartXe logo in lights across the stage; dozens of perfectly sculpted, expensively enhanced dancers wearing imagination-defyingly tiny outfits (a baby oil sales exec’s dream come true) and a staggering stage set - the whole display a glorious triumph of pomp over seriousness.

My friend - a Privilege virgin - is standing goggle-eyed: “Now this is what I expected an Ibiza club to be,” he says reverently. And he’s right. I’ll be back. Without prejudice.

Photos and text By Cila

(Cila is an occasional/regular contributor to the blog and Ibiza NOW magazine.)

Clubbing in Ibiza is big business and I always assumed it was run like big business. Men in suits. Offices. Power lunches (possibly). Faxes. Secretaries making notes. You know, organised.

How wrong I was. Turns out Ibicenco club deals are done on a basis that makes the Sant Jordi Saturday market look like Selfridges. It may (but is by no means guaranteed) to involve: endless hours of waiting, linguistic muddles, chupitos, gay discos, bad wifi connections, cutthroat negotiating, midnight meetings that start in one club and end hours later in another, 4AM cross-island dashes to “check out the competition” - all played out in a haze of booze, hash, thumping kick drums and financial desperation.

That is roughly how unlikely bedfellows SuperMartXe (Spanish gay spectacular) and Sophisticated Funk (a hip-hop/R&B outfit) came to share Friday nights at Privilege. Given they are replacing Manumission and one wrong move in the World’s Biggest Club equals the World’s Biggest Flop the level of barely controlled chaos is either insane or admirable. But very, very Ibicenco.

Cila

Ordinarily I refuse to take an interest in any sporting event that doesn’t directly involve Jose Mourinho, but it would be churlish not to cheer on Spain as they push through Euro 2008. So 80-odd minutes into yesterday’s Spain-Sweden match I managed to find an empty table at Mar y Sol in Ibiza Town, ordered a shandy and settled in to see the finish.

Frank Lampard was sat a few tables away, with a full complement of friends, kids and his stunning Catalunyan fiancee, Elen, not looking particularly gutted to be relaxing in the sunshine rather than dashing around a pitch.

Since he still has a sort-of shine for me, thanks to his heroics during Chelsea’s title runs under Jose, I texted my best friend back home with the news. He rang back promptly. “Is he really there? Can you take a picture of him?” Yes, and no, I said. Just then I caught a goal-run out of the corner of my eye and - along with everyone on the bustling terrace - started whooping as Villa finished to seal a win and put Spain through to the quarter finals.

People who pay far more attention to these things than I do assure me Spain has a habit of “underacheving” in major tournaments. I’m very much in the “who cares? It’s all bulls**t anyway,” camp but still, it’d be fun to see them do well. If only for the sake of a few more evenings sitting in the sunshine with a glass of Estrella and the newspaper.

By Cila

It’s the opening party of We Love at Space today - and for the first time the doors will be opening at 4.30pm instead of 8am. Will this affect the We Love party? We think not! With an opening line-up that includes 2manyDJs, Smokin’ Jo, Paul Woolford, Tom Novy and Jason Bye we are expecting a super-charged opening fiesta to kick off We Love’s 10^th anniversary celebrations this year.

We’ll let you know how it was tomorrow and you can listen for yourself on the We Love Podcast, online every Tuesday at www.welove-music.com. The opening fiesta show includes interviews with We Love and Mambo resident, Jason Bye, Jem Haynes of Chew the Fat! and with ultimate mash-up duo 2manyDJs - not to be missed.

-Ruth Osborn