Food

Although authentic island cuisine is being edged out by pizza parlors, those who stray off the tourist trail are rewarded with bold-flavored hyper-Mediterranean cooking that makes abundant and often surprising use of fish, olive oil, and the beautifully sweet local peppers and eggplants. The omnipresent pork shows up as sobrasada—the soft Mallorcan paprika-flavored sausage paste—and as lard, the secret behind the incredible crumbliness of sweet and savory island pastries, such as cocas and cocarrois. The sweet flavors that so often sneak into savory dishes are an Arab legacy.