Felip Llufriu, magic in the kitchen

Felip Llufriu, who this year is returning to the island for the fourth year after spending more than two decades in Barcelona directing the stoves of the "Roca Moo", of the prestigious Roca brothers, of the Celler de Can Roca, where Felip got a star of the Michelin that he kept for more than a decade.

Last year, his ”Mon” restaurant presented important news, on the one hand the opening of 8 Fonda-style rooms on the first floor of the modernist building that was the residence of the jewelry industry entrepreneur Joan Salord Comella, known even by the older ones as "Cas Cigarret". There Llufriu offers us 8 rooms with lots of light, modern, and because he wants to preserve the spirit of the old inns, there is no television, but he does get on the modern bandwagon with wifi.

Hydraulic tiles, predominance of whites, neatness and creating the first gastronomic inn in Ciutadella, has been the objective of Felip Llufriu for this 2017, which he hopes will help deseasonalize and be able to have people, at least on the weekends of the months in the winter, where he exercises his master's degree to the cooking students of IES Mariàngels Cardona, where he trained almost 25 years ago.

As far as the restaurant is concerned, in addition to new additions to the kitchen and dining room equipment, the most striking thing is that there is no menu, only two set menus, one for 25 euros and the other for 45 euros, which include an aperitif and bread of minor wheat, made in the workshops of "S'Avia Rita" in Ciutadella. Also in its commitment to local products and support to the primary sector, the olive oil is from the estate of Son Felip, in the north of Ciutadella, in the vicinity of Cala Pilar, and the salt is from Ses Salines de la Concepción de Fornells, the only active salt company in Menorca, and a surprising fine butter from Es Mercadal.

Felip Llufriu is a chef full of magic, of excellent finesse in the treatment of the product, in his service, and also as a person. Humility, good treatment and proximity are his business cards.

The restaurant is presented open to the light, spacious and details kept to a minimum. When you arrive and sit at the table, you begin your journey through a world of flavors, experiences, and textures that make su Mon a benchmark for cuisine of cuisines in Menorca.

In their menu they play, combine, merge the local product with capital letters, sought after and pampered with quality raw materials to start a bowl of foie gras with Menorca cheese and candied figs, liver (fig jam Menorca), which is an element that Llufriu loves and presents every year in his creations.

We continue with a surprising and risky proposal at the same time, their octopus sausage with onion. It is his transformation, his hand in the new Menorcan cuisine of one of the traditional dishes of our marine recipe, the octopus with onions, which has been given a spectacular twist.

We couldn't miss the star product of Menorcan gastronomy, the lobster, and as it does with the octopus with onions, it gives new life to one of the great classics, the lobster with peppers, where on the other hand we enjoy a generous lobster neck unshelled and fried, with a texture of roasted red pepper like a savory sponge cake, and in addition it presents roasted peppers, as always done in Menorca, toasted and then confitados with olive oil and garlic, which bring us closer to the local cuisine and what we really tried was a lobster with peppers as it should be.

The fourth item on the menu is the fish of the day, the one found in the Plaza del Mercado in the morning. We had a plate of raya, sublime, with orange and black olive sauce. Surprising textures in the bastina fish and the Mediterranean flavors of the orange with its citrus touch and the black olive in oil, which brings us back to the Mare Nostrum of flavors.

For the meat, he surprises us again by opting for one of the king sausages of the island, and which is not made in Mallorca or in the pitiusas, the white sausage (white blood sausage), which contains meat, egg and spices such as cinnamon, accompanied by a fine sauce of foie gras and pear compote, which makes it a unique dish and which will surely be one of the benchmarks of this new Menorcan cuisine.

To finish, we will immerse ourselves in the world of sweets with a surprising light mousse or apricot mousse, orange blossom and Menorca chamomile, and finally, a strong dish for chocolate lovers: chicory, coffee and chocolate, which I am sure will not leave you nobody indifferent