The island
nobody writes about.

01 — How it started

I didn't plan to
stay this long.

I came to Mallorca the way most people do — for a holiday. Sun, sea, a good dinner or two. I stayed because the island kept surprising me. Every time I thought I knew it, it opened another door. A village I'd driven past a hundred times turned out to have the best lunch on the island. A beach I'd dismissed as too remote became my favourite place to be at 7am.

Ten years later, here I am. Still finding new things. Still taking notes. Still dragging friends to restaurants they weren't sure about and watching their faces when the food arrives.

That's how Mallorca Insider started. Not as a business idea, but as a running list I kept for everyone who asked me: "You live there — where should we actually go?"

The list got too long to send by WhatsApp. So I built a product instead.

02 — What nobody tells you

The island most
people miss.

Here's the thing about Mallorca that travel guides consistently get wrong: they write about the same thirty places. Over and over. The cathedral. The beach clubs. The one market everyone already knows about. And those places are fine — some of them are genuinely brilliant — but they're not the island.

The island is the bakery in Pollença that's been making the same ensaimada since before your parents were born. It's the family restaurant in a village with no sign outside because they've never needed one. It's the cove you only find if someone tells you exactly where to park and which path to take.

That's what I know. And that's what a personalised plan from Mallorca Insider gives you. Not the thirty places everyone goes. The places that are actually worth your time.

03 — The real Mallorca

What I love about
this island.

Mallorca is one of those rare places that has managed to stay itself despite everything. Despite the tourism. Despite the airport that handles more passengers than Heathrow on a peak summer day. Despite the beach clubs and the celebrity sightings and the magazine features.

Underneath all of that, the island is still deeply, stubbornly Mallorcan. The language. The food. The pace of life in the interior villages where people have lunch at 2pm and dinner at 9pm and no one is in a hurry about anything. The olive trees that have been growing since before Columbus sailed. The Sunday markets that have been happening in the same square for three hundred years.

I love that. I love that you can have the best mojito of your life at a beach club on the southwest coast and then drive forty minutes inland and find yourself in a village that feels like it hasn't changed since 1960. Both are Mallorca. Both are worth your time.

04 — How I eat here

The food is better
than people say.

People underestimate Mallorcan food. They come expecting Spanish tapas and they're not wrong — you can eat brilliantly in the tapas tradition here. But there's also a whole local culinary culture that most visitors barely scratch the surface of.

Sobrasada. Ensaimada. Tumbet. Pa amb oli with the right tomatoes — which is a very specific thing and a very specific kind of good. Lamb from the interior. Fish that was in the sea this morning. Wine from the Binissalem appellation that you have probably never heard of and will absolutely want to come back for.

The restaurant scene in Palma specifically has exploded in the last five years. There are now genuinely world-class kitchens here — places that could hold their own in any European city. And then there's the stuff that's been here for decades, doing the same thing the same way because they've never needed to change. I love both. My guides have both.

My rule when I eat here: always ask what's local, what's seasonal, and what the person behind the bar actually recommends.

05 — The honest bits

What I'd tell you
to skip.

In the spirit of actually being useful: here are some things that I think are overrated, overhyped, or just not worth your limited holiday time.

The north coast in August. It's beautiful. It's also completely full. The roads are gridlocked by 10am. The beaches are shoulder to shoulder. If you're going in summer, go to the east coast instead. Same water, a fraction of the crowd.

The "famous" restaurants that got famous five years ago. You know the ones. They're still coasting on reputation. There are better places now and they haven't caught up yet. My database is updated regularly specifically to avoid this.

Renting a car the whole time if you're staying in Palma. You don't need it. The city is walkable, the taxis are cheap, and parking in the old town will make you feel things no holiday should make you feel. Take the car for a day trip to the interior. Leave it at home the rest of the time.

The best thing about knowing a place well is knowing what to skip. That's worth as much as the best recommendation.

I include this kind of honest intel in every guide I build. Not just the highlights — the context. The "avoid this in July" and "this is only worth it if you book three weeks ahead" and "actually the place next door is better and nobody knows it yet."

06 — What I built

Why I made
this a product.

I used to spend a lot of time writing personalised recommendations for friends. Long WhatsApp messages, spreadsheets, voice notes walking someone through a neighbourhood while they were packing their suitcase. I loved doing it. But it didn't scale.

So I built Mallorca Insider. A way to give everyone who asks the same quality of answer I'd give my closest friends. Personalised to how they travel, where they're staying, how many days they have, what their version of a perfect morning looks like.

It's powered by AI — but the knowledge behind it is mine. Every spot in the database I've been to myself. Every insider note is something I've actually said out loud to a friend. The AI just helps me build the guide at scale, in your voice and your vibe, faster than I could type it by hand.

The result is something I'm genuinely proud of. A guide that feels like it was written for you — because, in a very real sense, it was.

If you've read this far, you probably get it. Take the quiz. It takes two minutes and at the end you'll know exactly which kind of Mallorca traveller you are — and you'll get a taste of what your guide looks like.

And if you come here and find one place you wouldn't have found without me — that's enough. That's the whole point.