La Cocina de Cristine, Cristine Bedfor Mahón – Review

La Cocina de Cristine is the signature dining of Cristine Bedfor boutique guest house hotels. This time we experience Cristine Bedfor Mahón, in the old town of Menorca’s capital. Here, island chef Pau Sintes, winner of the European Young Chef Award in 2022, works with Menorcan produce and traditional home recipes. This property is also where the whole Cristine Bedfor story began.

The Story

Having stayed at the Cristine Bedfor guest houses in Málaga and Seville, I had long wanted to visit the original. Mahón is where Cristina Lozano first imagined Cristine Bedfor, the fictional daughter of a Spanish diplomat and his English wife. It is also here, with her friend, the interior designer Lorenzo Castillo, that she scoured antique shops and fairs for the pieces that would furnish her alter ego’s Menorcan home. Over the following years, the joy, beauty and homey style have travelled south to Andalucía, with the openings in Málaga and Seville.

On my September visit, the house was fully booked, so I did the next best thing and booked a table for dinner. It turned out to be the ideal way to see the place, because the restaurant is not a dining room in the conventional sense. Tables are set through the adjacent small salons, surrounded by everything Cristina and Lorenzo have curated.

The Setting

You enter from the quiet street, past the Michelin plaques. The interiors are pure Christine Bedfor. There’s a wall of antique painted mirrors, while the beamed ceilings are washed in a soft grey-blue. Rugs cover the herringbone brick floors, and the seating is a mix of sofas, rattan armchairs, French bistro chairs in blue and white, and a pine day bed piled with striped and block-printed cushions. In the front salon, a kilim hangs as a wall covering behind a sofa in faded red floral linen, with a glass chandelier above. A pile of design books are set on a table, including the Guest Books that always make an interesting browse, with their funny and creative thank you message and sketches. On another wall, ceramic figures sit on blue-painted brackets beside framed botanical prints. The whole look is layered, personal and slightly eccentric, conveying a homely, lived-in decadence.

The Dining

The menu, also posted on the street outside, tells you the story of each dish, the provenance of the produce. Fish and carabineros are from Sa Llotja, the Mahón fish market, while the sobrasada is farmhouse style from Santa Catalina, grilled and served with honey on pan cristal. Wild mushrooms come from Bolets Menorca, the butter from Sa Canova, and the flor de sal from the Salinas de Fornells. Mussels are cooked Menorcan style with Iberian pancetta and gratinated with mantega cuita, the island’s cooked butter.

We began with the bread service, thin pan cristal with grated tomato and island olive oil, alongside sourdough with the Sa Canova butter and Fornells salt. After days of culinary indulgence on the island, it felt like a wise choice to have the salad of fresh seasonal vegetables on a creamy aubergine base. Artichokes, baby carrots, baby corn, asparagus and potato were arranged over a smooth, smoky purée of aubergine, with pea shoots on top.

The Menorcan beef Rossini was our main dish, a thick tenderloin from island cattle with seared foie gras, with a glossy Pedro Ximénez reduction poured over. Sintes’ team shows their style, with jus a tasty delight. We finished with Cristine’s chocolate cake, a dense slab of dark chocolate with a buttery crumble and a scoop of red berry ice cream, served on vintage floral china. The sweet wine list is short and thoughtful, from tawny port and Tokaji to a Pedro Ximénez, a sweet Gewürztraminer from Penedès and an Asturian ice cider.

Sintes trained at CETT in Barcelona and passed through the kitchens of El Celler de Can Roca before coming home to Menorca. In 2022, the year Menorca was European Region of Gastronomy, he won the European Young Chef Award in Trondheim with a dish built from the produce of fifteen island suppliers. He first cooked at Cristine Bedfor for a one-off event through an outside catering company, and joined a year later, and has led the kitchen ever since.

Service is relaxed and friendly. If I have one small observation, it is that some of the tables for two are on the small side. You notice this once the bread, the butter dish, and the candle are on the table.

The Gardens & Pool

Beyond the dining salons, behind a sliding door is a pathway to the gardens, a treasure for guests staying at Cristine Bedfor Mahón. Vintage seating sits close to a trinkling fountain, while adjacent is the swimming pool, with sunbeds dressed with hammam towels, all steps from a decadent little pool bar.

The House

Guest rooms are charming, embodying the Cristine Bedfor style.

Next Door

The following morning I discovered Ca n’Oliver, the Centre d’Art i d’Història Hernández Sanz. The collection is in one of the finest merchant houses in Mahón, built between 1804 and 1805 for Llorenç Oliver, whose fortune came from the harbour trade. The house is crowned with a watchtower from which the family could see ships arriving. The grand double staircase is impressive, with its wrought iron balustrades rising beneath an oval skylight in front of a painted landscape mural. The collections of Francesc Hernández Sanz and his son Francesc Hernández Mora tell the story of the island through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There’s also a section on the British legacy in Menorca and a room of early maps, including a Dutch chart of the island from 1710 and an English survey from 1781. For anyone staying at Cristine Bedfor, this is an essential visit.