A Table At
Ca’s Patró March
The rail, the blue glasses and about three metres of air between you and the water.
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The rail, the blue glasses and about three metres of air between you and the water.
You do not stumble on this place. Ca’s Patró March is at the bottom of Cala Deià, a rocky cove below the village, and you get there either by walking down through the olive terraces for about forty minutes, by boat, or by driving a narrow lane to a small car park above the cove – five euros for the day, and it fills early.
We parked, had a coffee at the café bar at the bottom, which opens at eleven, and sat looking at the water for an hour until the restaurant opened at noon. I would do that again deliberately. The hour before it opens is lovely – the light is still coming in low across the cove, the staff are setting up, and there is nobody in the water yet.
The building is a converted fisherman’s hut and it has not been smartened up. Wooden rails, plastic chairs on the lower terrace, paper on the tables, and the sea perhaps three metres below you. If there is swell, you will feel the spray. Nothing about it is designed and that is the entire charm.
The menu is short and almost all of it came out of the water that morning. The waiter steered us to the catch of the day, which was a John Dory, grilled whole with lemon and oil and nothing else, and he was right – it was the best thing on the table. The razor clams were the other standout. It is not cheap, and you should go in knowing that; you are paying for the fish and the fifteen metres of rock it is served on.
The takeaway
Booking is the whole game. Tables open exactly fifteen days ahead, at midnight Spain time, on their website – and in July, August and September they are gone within minutes. Set an alarm for 11pm the night before if you are in the UK, or 6pm if you are on the US east coast, and be sitting at the laptop. The phone exists but they stop answering it when they are busy, which is most of the time.
If you do not get a table, go anyway. Walk down in the morning, swim, and put your name down as a walk-in with the understanding that you may be there a while – this works far more often than people think, particularly at the start of the service. Bring a book and treat it as a day at the cove with the possibility of lunch, rather than a lunch booking with a swim attached.
Walk down, get collected. The path from Deià through the olive terraces is forty minutes down and closer to an hour back up, in full sun. Walk down, eat, swim, and arrange a car for the way home – any hotel in the village will do it.
Go in June or late September. It closes over the winter, and July and August are when both the cove and the booking system are at their worst. Shoulder season you can sometimes walk in on a Tuesday.
It is touristy now in the sense that everybody knows about it. It is also still a family running a grill on a rock, and the fish is still the fish. Both things are true, and I would go back tomorrow.
The cove from the path down, with the restaurant on the right.