Es Verger
Café · Mallorca
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Es Verger is a restaurant on the mountain road above Alaró in Mallorca's Serra de Tramuntana, below Castell d'Alaró. It is known for paletilla de cordero, a lamb shoulder slow-roasted in a wood-burning oven and served on an outdoor terrace amid grazing sheep and mountain views; no bookings taken, closed Mondays. The road up is a graded climb, about 4.3 km at 8%, narrow, crossed by a hiking trail, with a café at the top used by hikers and cyclists.
Inside, Es Verger still looks like the farmhouse it always was: a converted barn with a concrete floor, plastic tablecloths, deer heads and old farm tools on the walls, and birdcages hanging from the beams. The lamb comes out of a wood-fired oven that has been in near-continuous use for more than a hundred years, run by the same family through the generations rather than sold on. Beyond the paletilla, the kitchen roasts whole kid goat and suckling pig from the same fire. It has stayed exactly this rough around the edges even after a television crew helped make it famous, which is part of the draw: nothing here was built for visitors, it just happens to feed plenty of them now.
What you see
The dining room is a working farmhouse barn: a concrete floor, mismatched plastic tablecloths, deer heads and antique farm tools mounted on the walls, and birdcages hanging overhead.
Practical
Parking at the top is limited to a small unpaved area at the end of a narrow access road, so many arrive on foot or by bike rather than by car. On busy weekends the lamb shoulder often sells out by mid-afternoon, so arriving before midday improves the odds of a table.
part of: Cafés at the foot of the climbrestaurantwood fired ovenfamily run