La Vieja

Canary Islands in the Balearic Islands

La Vieja is the name of the Canarian restaurant run by Jonay Hernández, a native from Tenerife who now lives in Mallorca and vindicates the cuisine of his homeland.

Author: Joan Ramis Boscana

Let's be honest: bureaucratic tasks usually bring with them a feeling of laziness that is hard to avoid. However, that is not the feeling we get when we enter the headquarters of PalmaActiva, the employment agency with headquarters in Socors street. After they have advised us on the subsidies provided to emblematic establishments - we needed to clarify some doubts -, we look for a place that has been listed for some years now in the prestigious Repsol Guide, a place covered by a layer of praise that we want to get to know firsthand. That is why we headed to a square that we know well, which is Raimundo Clar. La Vieja is the name of the Canarian restaurant run by Jonay Hernández, a Tenerife native living in Mallorca who revindicates the cuisine of his homeland to then spice it up with Balearic products. How can we refuse such an explosion of archipelagos?

At first we are assigned a table at the terrace. Although the umbrellas protect us from a sky that is sparkling, the waiter invites us to enter in a gesture of hospitality to which we cannot refuse. When we open the door of La Vieja, Las Canarias welcomes us with a salt shaker planted in the smile of the whole team. The restaurant staff works tirelessly behind the bar, painted with blue and white stripes. We are seated near large windows that let in the light of a cloudy day, next to a wall on which the illustration of a huge octopus created by the artist Disoh is displayed. The octopus uses its tentacles to grasp tightly - lest anyone snatch it away - some wrinkled potatoes, a mortar and pestle and a beer. While contemplating the illustration and carried away by some envy, we read the menu that Jonay has elaborated by digging deeply into his roots. What he has done with La Vieja is to create a concept of cuisine that is far from Flor de Sal, the other restaurant he runs in Camp de Mar.

Here what prevails are two things: a gastronomic offer that distills fineness marinated with street colors. A place suitable for many pockets whose location already speaks of its philosophy: it is located in the bowels of the old Chinatown of Palma, which today undergoes a facelift where La Vieja fits like a glove. The menu displays a bunch of dishes served hot or cold, Canarian recipes seasoned with Mallorcan products bought at the Mercat de Pere Garau. Encouraged by such a good reception, we want to taste a menu that has also made him appear, for two years in a row, in the Michelin Guide. A menu for two that we are going to share soaking up the essence of La Vieja, which we are already liking. 

To whet our appetite, they bring us a homemade bread with sourdough accompanied by a local specialty: mojo picón. Both ingredients are delicious, but the bread takes the cake because its texture and flavor hardly require any accompaniment; it could be eaten on its own. We put its crumb in our mouths when a salad and a celery cream are invited to our table. The presentation of the cream is impeccable, served in a ceramic bowl in which a few pieces of mango crumble and purple gofio swim. A warm recipe that, with the rain in the background, acquires an enlivening flavor. The salad has been baptized as César Manrique, a reinvention of the classic that replaces the chicken with prawns fished in the Mallorcan sea. Everything is served with pink sauce and a cucumber cut in julienne strips. A dish that has been revisited to make it their own, as much theirs as a marinated sea bream resting on a rice that does not come to the table alone, it is accompanied by its own fumet. Its appearance is promising, its crunchy touch is surprising, its definition in the mouth is a chimera. A marine combination that we want to enrich with another more rural one: that of a country chicken that has an aftertaste of wood, of barbecue. A flavor that is intensified thanks to its garnish: a smoked potato puree and a roasted leg sauce that, although we chew with our mouth closed, leaves us nearly speechless. 

The mousse of frangollo, banana and cookie that we had for dessert comes to tell us the following: in La Vieja we are Canary Islanders and we want you to come back. And we so plan to.