“H

ere, it’s not farm to table, it’s table in the farm,” jokes Pascal Barbot, the French chef whose three Michelin star restaurant is consistently ranked among the 50 World’s Best Restaurants. Barbot came to create a meal at Huerto del Mar, a garden suspended between sea and mountain. The conditions are challenging: a tiny kitchen, a plating table too low that strains the backs of the chef and his assistant. But none of that matters. The joy of working with exceptional products in the heart of nature outweighs everything else.

Since 2023, this foodie-favorite garden transforms, for the duration of a meal, into a pop-up dining table where island chefs — and others from afar — compose a menu using the products grown on site. French chef Armand Arnal from La Chassagnette, the ultra-creative Magnus Reid, Javier Calleja from Osma restaurant in Santa Catalina, Pascal Barbot from L’Astrance, and Pau Navarro from Taller Clandestí have each taken turns at the Huerto del Mar table. A challenge, but above all a pleasure: to create a bucolic cuisine, close to the earth, right before the plantations. About twenty guests sit on benches around a long communal table placed under a thatched roof, open to the whims of the Tramuntana wind. The comfort is simple, but the sensory experience, total.

Antoine, owner and creator of Huerto del Mar since 2019, brings this still-young garden to life with contagious energy. He moves from task to task: fixing a leaking faucet, arranging the spaces, guiding visitors through the garden while pointing out rows where cucumbers, summer squash or flowers grow. While work buzzes around him, small hands pick nasturtium leaves and bright orange flowers. “Please take cosmos flowers of all colors,” Barbot murmurs, attentive to details. “They will also need three varieties of sage — violet, red, and bicolor.”