In The Middle Of Nowhere

It used to be a restaurant, a different type of restaurant, one that had struggled. The lady owner was pleasant to the point of being jolly, but she couldn’t disguise the problems the restaurant experienced. They decided, four years ago, to call it quits.

The restaurant remained closed. A small garden in front of its entrance, hemmed in by a low wall, gathered discarded Coke cans and beer bottles. The alcove of the entrance porch filled with detritus, and the council’s street blowers would add to it by scattering leaves into its accommodating enclosure.

Then one day there was activity. For a year, the work involved not just the old restaurant but a unit next to it, a former supermarket which, like the old restaurant, had suffered from little trade.

It hadn’t been clear what was being created, until finally the name appeared, the glass frontage became evident and the terrace was laid. It was a new restaurant. A large restaurant, one made from two previously sizeable units. It was classy. From the outside you couldn’t have known how big the kitchen was, how well-equipped and modern it was, or that the restaurant bent in an L-shape, so that there was as much again as that which was apparent if you stood in front of it.

The new owners were pleasant as well. It was unfortunate that the work had dragged on so that it hadn’t opened until half way through the summer season, but there was optimism. There was, after all, no other restaurant immediately nearby. The parking was easy. There were hotels not far away. There were plenty of holiday homes and permanent residents.

The optimism didn’t last long. By the following season pessimism had taken root. The causes were not unfamiliar: all-inclusives; the amounts folks spent nowadays; economic crisis. The redevelopment work had begun to be undertaken before the impact of crisis was apparent. Bad luck?

Not totally. The reasons for the initial optimism were also reasons for wondering as to the wisdom of the restaurant. Having no competitor nearby isn’t necessarily an advantage. Being grouped with other restaurants creates an attraction as well as an atmosphere. Isolation can mean neither. A solitary restaurant, let’s say, for sake of argument, Can Cuarassa on the bay of Pollensa between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa, can benefit. It does so through the drama of its location. But the restaurant of our story, though in a pleasant enough location, does not have the same power of landscape or place.

Of the hotels not far away, some are far away enough to be far away, and they are also strongly all-inclusive. The other hotels, which are closer by, are more chic, five-star chic. A strong market you would think. Yes, but this is a strong market which can afford to take taxis to restaurants with more dramatic locations, a clientele that prefers to venture further afield, a clientele not just with money but also with a sense of its own worth, one better catered for by the ambience and gastronomic reputations of the area’s old towns or by splendid beachside establishments or by fine finca restaurants in the island’s hinterland.

This was intelligence that was known or that could have been sought before the new restaurant was born. There was other intelligence that was known, such as the growing influence of the all-inclusive and the trend towards lower tourist spend that pre-dated the economic crisis. Some of the factors which might have been grounds for optimism were the same ones that had led to the old restaurant closing.

Yet the new one came along. And it replaced not only the old one but grafted on the adjoining unit. How much had it cost? The time alone that was taken on conversion must have meant a significant outlay.

The pessimism grew. And finally, just recently, the restaurant gave up. It is sad to see it go, but it is not a surprise. The model for its business was never there. Its market existed more in the hope than in the reality. Its size was one thing, its location another. It wasn’t in the middle of nowhere as such, but it might as well have been. Indeed had it been, it might, blessed by a more remote and more dramatic location, have been more viable.

But even with the knowledge and the market intelligence, would the mistake have been avoided and will the mistake be avoided in the future? Optimism, egotism, blind faith; they can all contribute to the heart ruling the head and making opaque what should be transparently obvious. Similar stories are yet to be told and similar mistakes will keep on being made.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Square, Practical, Good: Germans and food

The Germans are a people of routine and convention, not least when it comes to food and drink. They are also a people who believe, not always wrongly, that if it’s made in Germany (it referring to anything), it’s better than from somewhere else. When it comes to cars, they are right. Food, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.

The German attitude to food has been no better encapsulated than in the ultra-snappy slogan for Ritter Sport chocolate. “Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut.” Square, practical, good. It’s less a slogan and more a series of words that, in translation, form a lesson for German engineers to explain in English the shape and benefits of whatever they happen to be engineering. Even something as ostensibly pleasurable as eating chocolate needs to be explained according to a manual.

And so it is with other German food. Its functionality dominates over its genuine appeal. It is practical, square in the sense of providing a square (and usually large square) meal, but not necessarily any good.

The Germans engineer everything. And food and drink are no different. Mealtimes are precisely determined as though by real-time systems engineering. Twelve on the dot is lunch. Four on the dot is coffee and cake. Seven on the dot is the evening meal.

The routine and convention are such and the made-in-Germany tag so prevalent that it is hard to imagine any un-Germanic influences disturbing the pre-set equilibrium of German mealtimes and the German propensity to hoover up an entire beef herd in one sitting. However, this convention does skip cultures.

It must be all that engineering, but Germans approach the culture of Mallorcan food with a process of both scientific conformity and enquiry. Unlike the British, who are both predominantly an uncurious breed and one not inclined to be told how they should conduct themselves, the Germans take their convention of process control with them when they travel, along with their manuals. A guide book of some description is always to hand in informing them as to the convention as to what they should eat. They try tapas, for example, because the guide book says so. If it’s in the manual, it must be correct.

All this brings us to the impact of a substantial increase in the number of German tourists in Mallorca’s main resorts this summer. In Alcúdia, for example, there is a 20% increase in German tourism, one that has not been anything like matched by an increase in British tourism. This increase has had an effect on one area of the local restaurant business. The Indians.

Curry would not be something to be found in the German tourist’s manual for eating in Mallorca, but the Germans, as with the British, are still very much creatures of habit; witness, for example, all that coffee and cake being wolfed down at four on the dot every afternoon. And curry has a peculiarly German flavour and a peculiarly German application. The sausage.

Curry wurst is a German institution. While it is thought that the Germans don’t have the same taste for tandoori or balti as the Brits, they do like smothering their sausages with curry sauce. It might seem odd that one restaurant has suddenly re-branded itself as a German curry house, but not when you consider this tradition.

Checkpoint Charlie, for this is the new name, boasts that it offers “Berlin curry”. When I went past and saw this, I thought it was completely mad. I know I shouldn’t have, but it conjured up the thought of waiters from the sub-continent sporting lederhosen and their lady wives swapping their saris for a dirndl. There again, they don’t generally wear lederhosen in Berlin.

But it isn’t quite as mad as it first seemed. There’s something of a moral here. It is one of reacting swiftly to what is happening in the tourist market. If there are that many more Germans around, then adapt to try and attract the business. Berlin curry may not conform to the conformity of how the Germans approach their Mallorcan eating experiences, but it is at least in line with a German market that is nothing if not conventional. Whether there should be a slogan though, I’m not sure. Practical? Possibly. Good? With any luck. But how do you describe the shape of a sausage?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Keep It Simple: Design

“The Bulletin” has been re-designed. As part of a stable that boasts the Catalan daily “dBalears”, which won an award for its makeover, the result of this re-design should be positive.

The “dBalears” revamp was contemporary in one very strong regard. Its look owed and owes much to internet presentation. It is perhaps an irony of digital competition that the print media should ape this competition, though it is not a surprise. Good layout on a screen demands clean lines and appearance; the same principle applies to whatever format.

There is, however, design and there is design. No, make that that there is design, design and design. Design that is simply no good, that which is good, and that which is good but completely misses the point.

I was in a bar the other day (the Jolly Roger). There was a poster on one of the wooden posts. I looked at it and I continued to look at it. I had to go back and look again. Finally, someone (Grizz) came in and without asking pointed at something on the poster and announced that a complaint should be made. There it was. What I had been unable to see. The date.

If you are going to have a poster for an event, in this case a horse spectacular in Alcúdia, one fairly basic requirement is that you clearly communicate when it’s taking place. This poster does nothing of the sort. The reason for my being unable to locate the date was how it had been designed.

The problem with the design was that the date was not only to the left, it was also vertical. Its positioning and style broke two fundamental rules. One is that the eye tracks to the right, unless you’re an Arabic reader and the eye goes the other way, in which case you will have just read “daer tsuj evah …”. While the main visual look of the poster, that of a horse, strangely enough, grabs the attention, it is the information that needs to be communicated which is as important, and being informed as to when the show is happening is far from unimportant.

Just as the eye tracks to the right and not to the left, so it also, or rather the brain, needs to adjust to a vertical visual and more specifically text that runs vertically. It’s why I couldn’t see it, even though it was literally staring me in the face.

There is nothing wrong with breaking rules, but design which may be good (and to be honest the overall poster design isn’t that good) has to keep to the point. Which is to communicate.

In Mallorca, there are an awful lot of designers. It seems, at times, as though whole school years leave education armed with a design qualification. There are hordes of them, armed with Photoshop and Illustrator and with innovation firmly in mind. This has spawned some remarkably good graphic work. The standards of Mallorcan design are high, owing at least something to an artistic heritage on the island.

However, the craving for innovativeness can get in the way of the message. Similarly, a lack of appreciation as to audience can also obscure what it is that is meant to be conveyed. I’ll give you an example.

A few years ago, the Pollensa autumn fair had a visual that was meant to be some sort of agricultural tool. You could have fooled me. It looked more like a sex aid. I was completely baffled by it. While it may have meant something to the local Mallorcan population, it meant nothing to anyone else. Too much promotional material suffers from a failure to communicate in different languages, but when the visual imagery misses the point of its audience, or potential audience, then any innovation becomes pointless.

Simple really is often the best. Take design for restaurant adverts. Tedious may be the almost default style of advert which shows a terrace or an interior, but it is actually important. It was a message that came over when someone was analysing different designs as a tourist. Those with shots of what the place looked like were more meaningful than something more arty that didn’t. The message was very powerful, because the very audience the adverts were being intended for was being influenced by one of the most powerful things a restaurant has to sell – its look.

And look is everything. Adverts, brochures, newspapers. And simple is also very often everything.

N.B. The re-design of “The Bulletin” is from Saturday, 30 April. This article, forwarded as usual for reproduction in the paper, would appear to have been vetoed on the grounds that the design team responsible for the re-design might be a bit “touchy”. Can anyone explain why? Given that this article had been knocked out earlier than would normally be the case, as with a now alternative, in order to help them out for their grand re-launch (at a time when I don’t have a lot of spare time), I feel I have every right to be a tad pissed off. Perhaps sensibilities towards contributors and remuneration might be as strong as that afforded to a bunch of designers.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

We’ll Fight Them On The Beach Restaurants

So, here was an interesting little thing that caught my eye. In “The Bulletin” on Sunday. The headline was “Menorca fights all-inclusive tourist offer”. The short news item said that the “Council of Menorca” (was) fighting back against the all-inclusive offer by setting up an online scheme where(by) visitors planning to come to the island can survey local restaurants giving meals at a special price, and calculate their expenses in advance.”

What a very good idea, thought I. Visitors would also be able, the piece continued, to compare costs against that of an all-inclusive offer. Intrigued, I went in search of the website. I was intrigued not just by what seemed a good idea but also by the surprise of it. Why was I surprised? Well, would an island council, Menorca’s or any other, actually be presenting something that might be seen to undermine its hotels? Yes, it wants to boost its restaurants and other businesses, and no, the councils aren’t necessarily in cahoots with the hotels as such, but “fighting back” against AI? Was it really doing this?

Disappointingly, it isn’t doing this. On the “Menorca Full Experience” site, the introduction says that we (tourists) want to know in advance costs of various things and that we have a problem with budgeting for lunches and dinners. Nowhere is there any mention of all-inclusives. Might this be for a reason other than letting tourists make some cost comparison, as in all-inclusives will soon be a thing of the past?

The island’s tourism minister, Lázaro Criado, said, when the site was launched at the start of March, that “we understand that all-inclusive is not the agreed strategy for the long term in Menorca, although it can prove useful in the short term”. Just like Mallorca, then. If anyone can decipher what the minister means (and it is hard to believe what he appears to mean), answers on a postcard with a picture of one of the participating restaurants, assuming you can find one of them.

The idea behind the site is that restaurants are listed, along with their menus, and a discount price is offered on production of a voucher that can be printed out. Fair enough. But hardly new. A slight problem with what there is on the website at present is that there are very few restaurants participating. How many? Three. Yes, three. In the whole of Menorca. In certain sections of cuisine and in certain “urbanisations”, there are none listed. One presumes it’s all early days.

This website has nothing to do with all-inclusives, but everything to do with promoting local gastronomy, all three restaurants’ worth of it. There’s nothing wrong with such promotion, while it would indeed have been a surprise had there been some sort of cost-comparison measures being presented, which there aren’t. One can of course do one’s own cost comparison, by schlepping through all manner of websites to get to the comparison, but you won’t get it by “falling in love” with Menorca, the claim of the tourism board’s site.

Giving some advance information about what it might cost to eat out is not, in itself, a completely bad idea. It is one of the questions holidaymakers ask all the time, along with how much does a pint cost and what’s the weather like. The trouble is that the answers to them are of the string variety. How long is a piece of it? The weather you can be reasonably sure of, in July for example, but not in September. As for the costs of eating out, one man’s meat is another man’s pizza, as indeed one man’s Burger King is another man’s typical Mallorcan (or Menorcan) cuisine in a romantic, beach-side setting. It’s not comparing eggs with eggs, or a fried egg with a rasher of bacon with quail’s eggs and smoked salmon.

Calculating the holiday budget in advance, by sizing up less than a handful of restaurants’ menus, with or without discounts, does rather overlook the increasing trend for the holidaymaker to have pretty much a set budget to spend, regardless of advance price information or discounts. And while a discount here or there might be tempting, it won’t be if it means trekking across an entire island in search of it. To be of any real value, discounts have to be clustered in an area close to the holidaymaker, but if enough establishments offer them then the offer itself becomes standard and thus loses its capacity to incentivise.

As for a cost comparison between all-inclusives and a mix of accommodation and eating-out, it could well be that one can make a case for the latter working out cheaper. Again, it does all rather depend. But even this overlooks a crucial ingredient in the all-inclusive’s favour, which is its sheer convenience. Holidaymakers should be more adventurous, but many have lost the capacity for adventure-seeking because they are handed everything on a paper plate, together with the poolside, plastic knife and fork.

Menorca is not fighting back. It is not fighting the all-inclusive on the beaches, as only one of the three restaurants is indeed a beach restaurant. Criado also reckoned that “with this formula (that of the website, whatever this formula actually is) we wish to respond specifically to the demand for all-inclusive in Menorca”. If so, when why not say so. On the website. There again, all-inclusive is not for the long term, says Sr. Criado. Who’s he trying to kid?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Through Sepia-Tinted Spectacles: Alcúdia’s cuttlefish fair

Sepia, in English, is the fluid secreted by cuttlefish. The word is more commonly associated with sepia tint, the brownish colour utilised by designers, film-makers and others to provide a nostalgic, clichéd effect that represents “old”. Though the inky fluid itself might not be used any longer, it was this that first gave us sepia tint.

In Puerto Alcúdia, the Confraria de Pescadors (literally, the fishermen’s brotherhood) has its own building. It is on the old pier in the port. In it, there are ancient photos, some of them with sepia tint. These photos have, on the occasion of past spring fairs in Puerto Alcúdia, formed exhibitions of the local fishing history. This year, the building and the Confraria will not be taking part in the spring fair.

Sepia, or sipia, depending on your linguistic preference, is Spanish and Catalan not only for the tint but also the cuttlefish itself. The sepia fair, combined with a nautical fair, has become an established, early-spring event in the port. The boat bit was spun out from the autumn fair in the old town as a way of addressing the fact that the port was missing out in not having its own fair. Locating it in the port also made greater sense. And so it was that when the idea for the boat fair was hit upon, they decided to invent another one to celebrate the local fishing industry, its heritage, its skills and its different major catches, of which sepia is one.

Devoting an entire fair to what for most Brits is something to do with keeping budgerigars happy and to what is like stuffing an inner tube into your mouth seemed, to this Brit anyway, a weird pretext for a celebration. Unless it is cut into small pieces, fried with herb and spice and served with rice and some mayo, cuttlefish is rotten, to the point of being inedible. But then who am I to deny a culinary tradition, even if it is no good?

The first sepia and boat fair in 2006 was a huge success. Blessed by perfect April weather, warm, blue skies brought out vast numbers of visitors in giving the port a pre-season boost. Terraces were jammed, so much so that some restaurants could  barely cope with the demand.

Since 2006, the fair has hit some difficulties. The crowds still come, but there have been rumblings from some restaurants that they have been overlooked when it comes to participation, while others have moaned about demands placed upon them for paying for town hall promotion.

The boat fair has also not escaped some backlash. Though it is the island’s largest outside of Palma, it is small by comparison. Some nautical-related businesses in Alcúdia itself, those situated close by in the Alcudiamar marina, have ceased to have their own stands, either on the grounds of cost or because they can’t afford to have personnel at both a stand and at their units in the marina. The most popular stands during the weekend event are not those with boats, jet-skis and the like, but the craft stalls of the market that was a later addition to the fair’s mix.

There is now a further difficulty. The Confraria, the fishermen themselves, are going to withdraw their support and participation. While the sepia fair was partly intended to be a celebration of the fishermen’s work and of their cuttlefish catch, this hasn’t proven to be the case. Restaurants, rather than buying their sepia from the local fishermen, get it from wholesalers at prices half or more than those that they have to pay the fishermen. It is for this reason that the fishermen are planning to down nets and take them home over the weekend of 9-10 April.

Alcúdia’s mayor, Miguel Llompart, has been attempting to arbitrate in what has become a real old spat between the restaurant owners and the fishermen. He concedes that the negative responses from the fishermen in respect of, for example, lowering their prices a tad will mean that neither the Confraria building nor the old pier will be part of this year’s fair. The pier is in fact loaned out for the event, and on it, were it once more to be made available, would be a marquee in which restaurants would sell tasters of sepia that has not been bought locally.

Though it seems perverse that the fair should not feature the local catch, one can have sympathy for the restaurant owners. Why should they pay up to 12 euros a kilo when they can get away with paying as little as four euros? An answer might be that they should be prepared to pay the higher rate; they do, after all, reap some benefit from the event and they are part of the same local economy as the fishermen. But needs and economic times must, you have to suppose.

Without the local catch, however, the whole event becomes a bit of a charade. The sepia angle becomes a commercial excuse rather than a cultural justification. The fair, when it started, was a very good idea, but the best of ideas can become mired in local battles. And so, in years to come, there will be photos of the first, glorious spectacle, a reminder of what it once was, tinted with sepia.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

China In Your Hand

Here’s an illuminating fact. In just one month, October of last year, the volume of Chinese products that were bought in Mallorca was double that for the whole of the year 2000. The Chinese invasion, that can be seen in the growth of the number of shops selling cheap products, shows no sign of slowing down. While crisis forces others out of business, Chinese businesspeople step in and snap up premises. The Chinese population in Mallorca, now just over 4,000, is only around a quarter the size of the British, but it is also growing and is different in one respect – the Chinese do not come to Mallorca to retire; they come to work and to run businesses. Period.

What has brought the Chinese invasion about? There is a commonly held belief that Chinese businesses enjoy tax breaks. Though you will find many a reference to tax holidays for five or seven years, there is also ample evidence to suggest that these are something of an urban myth. The director of the Spanish confederation of small to medium-sized business organisations is one who disputes the idea. The tax office has also denied that such assistance exists. Where help, of a governmental nature, is available, it is more likely to come from the Chinese Government in the form of a grant.

Why would the Chinese offer financial assistance? One reason lies with the need for a sort of economic “lebensraum”, an acknowledgement of China’s domestic inability to satisfy employment and business opportunities. Another is that it is a form of economic imperialism, which may not be far from the truth.

It is the fear, real or not, of an economic army marching on Mallorca and Spain, allied to the tax-break story, that helps to fuel some of the xenophobia directed towards Chinese businesses. Business organisations maintain that there is no “war” against the Chinese entrepreneurs, but complaints about their practices are rising as quickly as new shops open: complaints as to the legality of premises, as to proper licences, as to the quality of products and as to the hours that are worked.

Anxiety as to what is perceived as favourable treatment of Chinese businesses has been heightened by what might otherwise be seen as good news for Spain: ever closer economic ties between Spain and China, as evidenced by trade agreements signed last week. There is also the matter of the Chinese Government holding, via the Bank of China, some 10% of Spanish debt.

What should be seen as generally positive is not. Rather, it is looked upon in some quarters as Chinese expansionism, with Spain as its main foothold in Europe. It’s the idea of economic imperialism again, and the Chinese bazaar or restaurant on the high streets of Mallorca’s towns is the foot soldier for Beijing’s imperial palace.

These fears and anxieties, the “denuncias” for alleged infractions and the rest can themselves be seen as disguising the fact that local businesspeople simply can’t get their heads around how the Chinese operate. The suggestions of financial favouritism ignore systems of family support for arranging funding for businesses and for sharing debts and also what in certain instances can be a pyramidal system of investment. The charges as to low prices and therefore – perish the thought – aggressive competition overlook the presence of vast warehouses on the mainland that supply Chinese businesses and also the existence of some local networks of businesses co-operating in purchasing in bulk. The complaints as to long hours being worked, despite working-hours agreements in employment law and orders as to opening hours, are symptomatic of the unpalatable truth that the Chinese function according to a work ethic which is alien to many a Mallorcan.

There is more bad news for Mallorcan businesses which have laboured for too long not labouring long enough and being largely immune to real competition. This is the emergence of Chinese brands, especially in the clothing and footwear sectors. Mulaya is one such and it, along with others, is growing in terms of its outlets and taking on the likes of Zara.

For all the angst about high prices in Mallorca, the Chinese businesses are doing their part to dispel it. They should be welcomed, and increasing numbers of consumers are welcoming them, but xenophobia and lack of local competitiveness combine to try and put obstacles in their way. Not to me, and not, I imagine, to many of you, as we walk home with some China in our hands.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Enjoy Your Trip: Review websites

Do you use TripAdvisor? Do you post reviews to it? Do you take notice of reviews on the site? Do you put reviews on other sites or are you guided by what others might say? Are your reviews potentially defamatory? Do you know that, in the UK at any rate, you might end up facing legal action if you do so?

The fight back has started. At a so-called “masterclass” in London, arranged by TripAdvisor with the intention of showing hotel and restaurant owners how they can make the most of the website, the whole thing turned into something of a fiasco – those owners expressing their anger as to how TripAdvisor goes about its business.

In fact the fight back started some while ago. In the UK, since 2008, misleading reviews, i.e. those which, for example, come from a hotel itself and masquerade as independent opinion, can be subject to naming and shaming by trading standards or even court action. It hasn’t helped that much. There are PR companies who will sort out good reviews, there are hotel or restaurant businesses who will give “incentives” to get good reviews. There can also be a whole load of family and friends only too happy to oblige. Users of sites – consumers, travellers – are being taken in.

Then there are the negative reviews. TripAdvisor says that it has ways of combatting them and it points out that has its “owners centre” through which responses can be made to negative comments, but this hasn’t satisfied owners who have seen their businesses’ reputations being dragged through the mud of cyberspace. The anger has given rise to the anti-TripAdvisor site – ihatetripadvisor.org.uk. The power of the negative review is such that owners can be subject to blackmail in order to stop bad comments.

TripAdvisor is singled out because it is the biggest and best-known of the review sites. It isn’t the only one of course. Far from it. There are so many reviews, opinions and comments plastered across Lord knows how many websites, it is a wonder that anyone has the time to ever go to a restaurant or take a holiday as they are spending so much of it on reading what can be misleading, malicious, ill-informed, gushing, potentially fraudulent. The wonder is that anyone takes any notice of any of it, given how unreliable it seems.

Recommendations from “real” people can be hugely powerful, as indeed can criticisms. This is why so much prominence is granted to sites such as TripAdvisor. The Spanish director of the site revealed earlier this year that a well-known but unnamed hotelier places more importance on the opinions expressed rather than the categorisation system that TripAdvisor has.

But the potential for abuse is enormous. Which is why a group of 700 businesses is considering a group defamation action against TripAdvisor, and why individuals can be liable to action against themselves if they’re not careful.

There is now advice being given to site users so that they can try and sort out the reliable and honest wheat from the ill-formed or misleading chaff. One piece of advice is that if several reviews all make similar observations, then the information should be ok. Maybe so, but there is an undeniable tendency to the me-too about much that is posted. It is the curious psychology of online communities, one of reinforcement. One person slags off or praises to the hilt and others follow my leader; they don’t want to be left out. And the reverse psychology, as it were, occurs when someone takes umbrage at this groupthink, which can then have the effect of reinforcing even further the initial line of argument. How dare anyone disagree?

I have recently seen a particular restaurant coming in for some harsh comment. As it so happened I was at another restaurant, two doors down from the one in the spotlight. I mentioned to someone who works there that the restaurant more or less next door has got a poor reputation. “Really? I like it. Food’s always good. It’s always packed. People wait on the street to get a table.” And this was from someone who is a chef in a rival establishment. Go figure.

The worst aspect of all this isn’t that a business can be brought to the point of ruin by bad reviews, deliberately arranged or just because, well, the place is no good or, for whatever reason, people don’t like it. This is bad enough. But more than this is the fact that we now seem incapable of making choices of our own. Everything is decided for us. By people we have never met, who don’t know what we really like, but in whom we invest colossal and utterly ludicrous amounts of credibility. Which country we might go to, which resort in a country, which hotel in a particular resort, which restaurant or bar, which this, that or the next thing.

Why bother going on holiday any longer? You can just stay at home and spend your week or fortnight reading the reviews. About as exciting as being on holiday, given that the spirit of adventure or the unknown has been lost. And even if you do go on holiday, how do you spend your time? Must tell everyone how good/bad it is. Go to sites x, y and z. “Hotel’s brilliant/rubbish. Restaurant’s outstanding/awful. Resort is fantastic/dreadful.”

Once upon a time holidays were there to be enjoyed. Of course there were bad experiences. So you never went back. Of course travellers and consumers did not have the “empowerment” of the internet to voice their discontent or their praise. Fair enough, but behind any comment, good or bad, can you be really sure as to its authenticity, as to how accurate it might be, as to how simply nasty it might be? You can’t. Information isn’t everything, and nor is having the whole trip advised.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Throwback: Why all-inclusives might have a point

In Playa de Muro there are 32 hotels. Depending on your definition, there are roughly the same number of restaurants. One restaurant per hotel. You might think that this was a pretty decent equation when it comes to there being adequate business for restaurant owners. Not so, when you take into account the impact of all-inclusive offers.

One restaurant owner was talking about a protest against all-inclusives. It’s a familiar theme, is it not? There was similar talk along Puerto Alcúdia’s Mile earlier in the season. But there is a difference in Playa de Muro, isn’t there? It’s a different market.

Playa de Muro does not have the same sort of vast all-inclusive ghettoes that Puerto Alcúdia has, but all-inclusive it most certainly does have. A trawl through some websites of hotels in the resort confirms this. From the more economy Continental and Lagotel to the more exclusive Vivas and Iberostars, you will find that all-inclusive is available. Playa de Muro may be a different market in that it is generally up-market, but what’s up-market when it’s still subject to the same market conditions created by all-inclusives. That restaurant owner was scathing not only about the existence of so much AI, he was also critical of what he saw as an undermining of the apparent “quality” in at least one of the more up-market hotels. Plastic glasses. Re-used. Or so he says.

Playa de Muro is a curious resort. It is a complete invention of the tourism boom. There was no Playa de Muro until the late 60s and early 70s. The development around Las Gaviotas and the Esperanza hotel started it all off, and then along came a handful of restaurants and ultimately the coastal colonisation as far as Alcúdia Pins. The resort has nothing of the past of a Puerto Alcúdia or Puerto Pollensa, or even Can Picafort: it just emerged.

But as with other resorts, those who started businesses there enjoyed some good times, some very good times indeed, buoyed also by the residential tourism of Mallorcan-owned second homes and foreign-owned holiday homes, of which there are a not insignificant number. However, Playa de Muro and its businesses, save for the hotels, is a victim of that old success. Many places have simply never moved with the times. And now that times are not so good, it’s hard to justify the sort of investment that might be said to be required to make places seem less, well, old-fashioned.

In the resort there are two five-star hotels. I was once told by someone at a car-hire firm that it, the car-hire agency, does good business with those from the five stars who head off in the search of restaurants, Pollensa perhaps; but not in Playa de Muro. I can recall forum comments from guests at four-star Iberostars preferring to stay in the hotel and eat because they weren’t much taken by the restaurants nearby. There is nothing wrong with the restaurants nearby, quite the contrary, but many look what they are – throwbacks. For a market that has grown more sophisticated, even one that goes AI, there is an image crisis in Playa de Muro. And to this one can add the fact that there is so little differentiation. Where, for example, can one eat Mallorcan cuisine? Mar Petita, yes. Meson los Patos, yes. But the latter isn’t actually in Playa de Muro. Otherwise, it’s a mix of burgers, steaks, grills and the odd touch of the Orient.

The counter-arguments that the hoteliers make when faced with complaints about the impact of all-inclusive include one that businesses should make a greater effort to improve or change their products. It’s not always easy, and in certain instances, e.g. along the Mile in Puerto Alcúdia, it’s especially difficult because of the nature of the market. But despite the all-inclusive, Playa de Muro is an example of somewhere, because it does benefit from a more exclusive market, where greater attention to product, to image, to marketing would probably go a long way.

There won’t be a protest because there would be a lack of will to effect one, and it would be of no value in any event. One can sympathise, and I do, because I know a number of these business owners, but try telling them that a change might benefit them and they’ll pooh-pooh the idea. Fair enough; they know better than I what their business is. I don’t run a restaurant. But I do hear and read a lot of comments, and I can observe for myself, as others observe and choose to stay in their 32 hotels.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Great Steak Wars: Really real in Playa de Muro

“Real steak.” Not real as in a Spanish football club, but real as in “real” – genuine, authentic, English. When is real steak unreal, do you suppose? When it’s not steak probably. The “real” moniker makes something of a change to those alternatives, especially authentic. Authentic (typical) Mallorcan cuisine, authentic Indian cuisine, authentic, authentic. I wish a restaurant would promote itself as being unauthentic. I might go then.

There is a real steak war emerging. A real steak war as in both the steak being real and there really being a steak war as opposed to a pretend one; well, sort of. The real steak war is also being fought out over real historical claims. Since 19–, apply your own numbers. The steak war is in Las Gaviotas, the area of Playa de Muro that no one really calls Las Gaviotas, if they happen to be a tourist, as equally no tourist really calls it Playa de Muro because they think, or are told, that it is Alcúdia, which it isn’t.

The restaurant S’Albufera has a chalkboard sign outside, declaring the reality of its steak and the years of really having been a steak house. 30 years, it would seem. Why has the restaurant made this move? It is, it would appear, an escalation of the war against a newcomer to the steak battlefield. Where would we be without them? The Dakota restaurants.

Almost next door to S’Albufera and its thirty years of steaking claims is a new Dakota, but not only a tex-mex Dakota. This is a steak house Dakota. A large sign says so. Steak House in big letters with some steak, some flames and a grill just to make sure everyone gets the message. Everywhere a steak house and everywhere a picture of some flaming grill. Flaming on fire and not flaming as a euphemism for “damn”. The flames of the damned though, as the great steak war hots up.

Steak houses have taken over. They are the new, well, tex-mex, except they’re not new, just that everyone seems to want to be a steak house and everyone is promoting steak credentials. It had never really occurred to me that S’Albufera was a real steak house, as it’s always been plain S’Albufera. But when the war is joined, so some realism is chalked onto a blackboard. And when it comes to the Dakotas, the longevity is, how can one put it, rather open to interpretation. Unlike S’Albufera which had also not previously boasted about its generation-plus existence. Or maybe it had; just that no one had noticed.

Do people really want all this steak? Real or not. Maybe they do. There are steak houses, kids newly on blocks, that are doing a roaring and flaming steak trade, albeit mingled in with kebabs and whatever else fills out the menu. Steak house, like pizzeria, has become something of a catch-all. Restaurant We Do Everything. And it’s real.

We should really have a competition. Where is the most real steak? Which is the most real steak house? I can’t honestly help as I rarely eat steak – rare or well done. A friend once said that Los Tamarindos in Puerto Alcúdia did the best steak he had ever eaten. I confess it wasn’t bad. The solomillo at Satyricon in Alcúdia was magnificent, but that’s hardly somewhere you might classify as a steak house. Boy in Playa de Muro’s steak and meat come in the size of a cow, deliciously marinaded, but it calls itself a grill, as does Los Tamarindos. No steak house for either of these places, but they are, just as much as those which say they are real steak houses or steak houses with no statement as to being real or otherwise.

You cannot avoid steak. Whole herds of beef cow cut, sliced, flavoured, spitting, roasting, grilling. And all of it real. Unless it happens not to be.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Not Televised: The end of tourism life

I don’t like the word “rant”. It suggests a rather unthinking outpouring of unbalanced sounding-off. I don’t think I rant. Not knowingly anyway.

But I feel like a rant. I think. I feel like something more than a rant. I feel like standing in streets and shouting. I want to be a Manic Street Ranter. Even more than this, I have been considering the introduction of dog and animal noises into my everyday communication. I want to bark, growl, bare teeth, salivate, look rabid. Why? Because I am terminally hacked off with the apparent breakdown of what were once the niceties of picking up a phone, of giving an answer, of merely acknowledging the existence of an interlocutor who had previously been in contact.

I had been inclined to believe that this current-day malaise was a purely Mallorcan/Spanish disease. But it isn’t. It appears to have crossed national boundaries. It matters not, it would seem, whether someone might owe you money or not. No, this isn’t a reason for pretending to have disappeared. I don’t actually know what the reason is. And it’s not as if the new “alternatives” offer a solution to my wish to howl. One can just as easily ignore someone on Facebook as anywhere else.

Maybe it just comes down to some old-fashioned notions. Call me old-fashioned if you will, see if I care. Courtesy. I like this word, unlike rant, which I don’t. A curtsy and a courtesy, madam?

Right. I don’t really know what all the above was about, but there you go. Let’s move on, shall we.

End of tourism life in Mallorca does of course come ever nearer. I’m running a book. The 24th of July is the favourite to be the actual end of tourism life. Some have somewhat stupidly suggested the 24th of September. Are they mad? No, no, it’ll all be over before the autumn equinox. Trust me. I have seen the near future and it finishes the day before the Sant Jaume fiesta. Why am I so confident of this? Because when I enter a tourism-related establishment hereabouts, I am confronted with a “muy mal” and a conviction that the end is nigh. “Eat less meat.” Remember him? The nutter who used to walk up and down Oxford Street. I’m wondering if I might take up the sandwich-boarding of new Day Zero along the paseos of old Puertos Alcúdia and Pollensa and all points Can Picafort. What a hoot.

There is though some justification for the end of the world occurring in late July, and at least part of it has to do with understanding the market. In Puerto Pollensa, things are, it would seem, worse than “muy mal”; they are muy, muy, mal, mal. I was told yesterday that the restaurants of the wrongly-monikered pinewalk, i.e. the promenade, which isn’t the pinewalk, as opposed to the pinewalk, which is, were stripped of all human life a couple of nights ago. With one exception. Can you guess? Go on. Choke on your tex-mex. The Dakota.

It’s not as if the Dakotas are that cheap. They’re not. But what they are, is bright and suggest that human life does exist. It is, I’m sorry to have to tell you, a question of marketing.

And then there is Puerto Alcúdia. I wandered into a restaurant in the port where a German boy who had ended up working there because he had missed his flight told me that things were, erm, a little slow. I engaged him and the chap behind the bar in meaningful conversation. Some places, said I, weren’t empty. Ah, but they’re famous restaurants, it was suggested. Well no, not really, I replied. En route to the port of Alcúdia, I had passed a steak house, let’s call it Dallas, shall we. It looked pretty full to me. Hardly famous. But it’s in a good place, it doesn’t make out that it is a work of art, its prices seem reasonable, the food looks presentable. And what do you know?

The problem is that, in these straitened times, too many businesses are working from the wrong perspective, their own. Who wants boutique-style eateries, serving up boutique-style dishes or “typical” cuisine? Well, some do, but many do not. It’s hard for many to stomach, but business is business. The end of tourism life will be the 24th of July. But not for all.

Don’t know. As I was writing this, something I hadn’t heard for years – but did on Spanish radio the other day – came to mind. Collapse of tourism, collapse of financial systems, collapse of governments and old truisms regarding electoral systems. Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised:

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.