If you’re not eating dinner by the ocean, are you even on holiday? I was lucky to spend a week on Ibiza recently, five years after my first holiday there and let me tell you, it is NOT all clubbing and rolling in at 7am from Pacha. Who knew? It turns out – many people clocked onto this long ago, I was just left in the dark. You can do Ibiza so many different ways, and one of them is spending a fair whack at some of the island’s renowned restaurants among beautiful settings; so that is what I did.
Being in the midst of a wedding week, there were roughly around 20 of us who went down for dinner at BEACHOUSE Ibiza on the sands of Playa d’en Bossa one evening. There being such a large number of us we launched in by ordering the vast majority of the starters on the menu to share, and it was absolutely the right decision. Beachouse has one of the strongest starter menus I’ve seen, and this is where the true quality of the food came through. First off, I can say with confidence that the guacamole, of all things, was one of the best I’ve had – and Beachouse is an Italian restaurant, so I wasn’t expecting that. The guacamole (€18) is expertly prepared at the table and perfectly balanced with just the right amount of kick from the chillies. The Italian burrata served with antipasti of marinated artichokes, olives, capers and tomatoes (€22) was another big hit, as was the Tuscan tomato panzanella salad (€18.00). Delicate slices of octopus carpaccio served with the daintiest brunoise vegetables and lemon oil (€22) looked like a work of art, whilst the Jamon Iberico (€44) went down as well as it ever does – i.e, the plate was cleared within two minutes of landing on the table. Calamari with an in-house made tartare sauce (€24) completed the seafood offering, whilst the thousand layer aubergine parmigiana with 12 month old parmesan (€19) paid tribute to the Italian roots of Beachouse. Washed down with plenty of crisp rose as the sun set over the sea, this course of starters was a huge highlight of eating out in Ibiza.
And then the mains happened, and unfortunately Beachouse let us down here. By the time the mains did come around, the wait staff seemed to have depleted by half to being just one person serving each large table. Which may have been fine apart from it took well over half an hour for ordered wine to reach us as the sole server was also in charge of deboning the fresh sea bream at the table (which ended up being dry anyway) and had no help in serving the rest of the mains or drinks. I can understand when restaurants are very busy and accept we were on a large table, but the restaurant was mostly empty at this time and I could see someone who I believed was the manager standing around doing nothing to help. All said, those who ordered pasta dishes such as Tagliatelle alla ragu Bolognese (€22) and Lobster linguine with tomato and chilli (€72 for two) raved about their meals, which you would hope for at an Italian restaurant, so I was pleased to see that not everyone had a negative experience with their main. It was a bit of a surprise after such a strong start to the meal, but there you have it.
I almost never write about places where I’ve had any negative experience as that’s not what First We Eat is about – it’s about recommendations I’d be happy to send my friends and family off with. Yet I would still list Beachouse to eat at in Ibiza based on the sheer quality of the starters we had and the stunning beach setting. I feel we were unlucky in that they may have had some servers finishing their shifts whilst we were still in the midst of a 20 person strong meal, but I don’t think this would be a problem if you were on a smaller table, and sometimes you do have to expect that things are slower for a large table. But Beachouse: just remember to keep the wine flowing and everyone will get over it fairly quickly!
Ctra. de Platja d’en Bossa, 2, 07817 Sant Jordi de ses Salines, Ibiza
+34 971 39 68 58
Open every day 10am until 2am