Gives A Meal Man Appeal

Well, I forgot to mention on Sunday that Winner's Dinners made a meal of Mallorcan cuisine - actually, a very good meal, the master of the sarcastic scraping into the waste-bin of restaurants announcing that "foodie heaven" is to be found in Mallorca. Yes, Michael did duly pen a piece following his celeb thrash-visit for Andrew Lloyd-Webber's 60th. Ah, how the other half live. Well, not the other half, the other very small minority, but be that as it may. I prefer it when Michael's being scathing; that's when he's at his best, his most obnoxious and his funniest. But Mallorcan cuisine, or more specifically, cuisine in restaurants in Deia, for which most might require a mortgage, came out smelling of roses, if food can be described in such a way, which - generally - it can't, so forget that.

But will the Winner seal of approval mean anything? Does anyone actually take any notice of him? Even if they do, his positive remarks are hardly general to the whole of the island. That there may be some cracking restaurants does not - of itself - mean that hordes of well-heeled foodies or even slack-heeled foodies will be hot-footing it to Mallorca for some expensive or more economical nosebag. It may be reassuring to know that one critic thinks a few restaurants in Deia and one in Puerto Portals can serve up some good scoff, but it doesn't mean anything for the rest of the island. Here we are again, in delusion land, picking over the exquisite bones of a minority tourism market, aimed at the few, and, in the case of both Deia and Portals, we are talking a minted few. Michael Winner says yes to Deia and its food. So what? In fact, what he also said was - "keep away". Doesn't want any old riff-raff turning up. Quite right, too.

That there are some excellent restaurants in Mallorca is not the stuff of significant tourism per se, and I wish there would be some reality here. It's the same with golf. "The Bulletin" runs an interesting piece today, in which it states that the island would be at a sort of golf-saturation point if seven planned courses were built. These would make the island the most densely golfed-out part of Spain. Yet, and this is a very interesting point, the number of registered players in Mallorca is, by some way, lower than in the likes of Alicante. Does Mallorca need more golf courses? No, it does not. There is not the demand on the island, and I seriously doubt that there is sufficient demand from overseas, given the competition from other golfing destinations. The environmental argument against more golf courses is not one that persuades me to question the building of more courses, but I am with the likes of the spokesperson for the Albufera nature park when he says - in the context of the argument over the controversial plan for the course on the Son Bosc finca - that there are already enough courses close by. And he's right. Once more, there is the delusion at play, delusion and a strategy (if you can call it such) of providing something (in this case, more golf courses) and expecting that a host of tourists will turn up on the first tee. They won't. Food, golf, not insignificant maybe, but neither is the generator of significant numbers of tourists as part of a drive for greater diversity in the island's most important economic sector.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Pet Shop Boys. Today's title - well, here's one for Michael Winner; where does this come from (it wasn't a song)?

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