Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so why not try an epic one at the ultra-chic Hospes Maricel in Palma de Mallorca? When I tell people I recently experienced the nine-course breakfast at the Hospes Maricel in Mallorca I always get the same reaction. ‘Nine courses!’ they exclaim, in a tone more appropriate to the disclosure of a disgraced banker's bonus. As if it could be that obscene! Yet even those who consider a tasting menu a thing of beauty might blanch at a nine-course one. Sure, we are constantly cajoled into believing this is the most important meal of the day; but nine courses? It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t get any easier. This is a meal that requires commitment, dedication, fortitude... I was advised not to have my usual kick-start caffeine fix for fear it might defame my palette. Instead, sitting on the cool terrace of the Maricel’s Senzone Restaurant, overlooking the gentle lap of the Mediterranean sea, I was presented with three shot glasses laced with freshly squeezed orange juice; mango juice; and strawberry with balsamic vinegar, the last, though unusual, turning out as delightful as cracking a little black pepper over this sweetest of summer fruits. Four more shot glasses followed with tiny gobbets of green apple in white peach juice with jasmine; miniscule beads of pineapple in blood orange juice; a purée of blood peach and violet juice with red berries; and a peach and aniseed juice with melon. Mark them off as unanimously splendid. A homemade lavender yoghurt with peach jam was gone in two creamy teaspoonfuls. Three courses down and this was actually starting to look like a breeze. I might pause for breath, put my cutlery down here a minute and tell you that what first attracted me to the Hospes group (they currently have nine hotels in Spain and one in Paris) was not the gastronomy, but the work they have been doing with the Iberic Association of Sleep Pathology, studying insomnia and other sleep related disorders. As a sufferer, I'd hoped to get beyond the Association’s earnest sounding Scientific Course of Sleep Studies to the core of the Sueños Project now being developed by Hospes. In Spanish, sueños rather charmingly translate as both ‘sleep’ and ‘dream,’ and dreaming is surely a fundamental part of why we travel. The Sueños Project is a work in progress, but the Hopses has already produced a book-length guide to Sleeping, Dreaming and Resting. A copy lay on my bedside table inside the calm, minimalist, creamy white rooms of the Neoclassical villa that forms one half of the hotel. There is a new wing that is soon to get its own Japanese restaurant and already feels very 'Zen.' One chapter of Sleeping, Dreaming, Resting zeroes in on nutrition and highlights the impact food can have on our sleep patterns. It provides helpful hints on what to avoid before bedtime. Heavy duty foodstuffs like aubergines, potato, ham, sausages, caffeine and chocolate are all on the dinner blacklist; no surprises there. But at breakfast they are encouraged, as course four proved. The Senzone’s staff finally consented to permit me a large goblet of creamy café con leche. It arrived with slithers of toast and a pentathlon of butters – pats of sobrasada (made from the local porc negre); chocolate butter; salmon cream cheese; milk chocolate cream with hazlenuts (which turned out to be more creamy than chocolatey or nutty); and another variation on that strawberry and balsamic combo. We were getting into high cholesterol territory as a plate of savoury pastries arrived – a brioche of camembert and ham; a brie and truffle sandwich (mercifully bijou); a puff pastry with crab ragout - followed by a hot potato foam with mushrooms, eggyolk and truffle salad served with olive bread. Nobody put a gun to my head and forced me to try every one of the sweet pastries – local ensaimadas, palmiers and caramelised almond biscuits – or the duo of chocolate drinks that followed, but if you can resist hot white chocolate with lemongrass, then you are a better man than me. If you’ve been counting you’ll know that I was just one course away from the finishing line. I’d started at around 9am; it was now tickling midday. The sun was rising high above the pillars of the Hospes’ handsome façade. Breakfast had seeped into brunch and circumnavigated the need for lunch. Perhaps this was its sleep secret; to exhaust you with its marathon proportions. A promised digestif to end suggested alcohol, but turned out to be an invigorating papaya, apple and ginger juice, served, once again, in a dinky shot glass. It gave symmetery to what the rather serious sounding Madrid Fusion Gastronomic Summit has called ‘the best breakfast in the world.’ That's a judging panel I'd like to be on, even if I don't entirely subscribe to those 'best in the world' lists. Sometimes a simple bacon sarnie is the most magical thing in the world. But it's nowhere near as epic. The Hospes Maricel, Carretera d’Andratx 11, Cas Català, Mallorca. Tel: +34 932 388 314. www.hospes.com Further Information: The Balearic Islands (www.illesbalears.es) and the Spanish Tourist Board (www.spain.info). |