From Andratx to Pollença, the Serra de Tramuntana forms the northern backbone of Mallorca. The sublime mountain range is contoured by fields of orange trees, olive and almond groves, and wineries abundant with Malvasia and Syrah grapes, while native goats graze along the rugged terrain.
This breathtaking, uninterrupted view of the knobbled northwest spine is what greets me when emerging from the pink, womb-like suite of Hotel Corazón, padding out to a secluded terrace dappled by slouching palm trees. I have already taken a slow yoga class on the patio and marinated in the “Sweet” suite’s curvaceous bath. The Balearic sun beats down on this enclave between Deià and Sóller, where the 15-room hotel, farm, restaurant, art space, and shop is set within a historic 18th-century finca. Owned and run by wife and husband duo, fashion photographer Kate Bellm and artist Edgar Lopez, Hotel Corazón is now in its third season after opening in 2023. Here, design, craft, and cooking are approached with equal fervor, driven by an all-female leadership team.
Hotel Corazón’s postcard mountain tableaux is bordered by a long, mustard yellow cushioned sofa, a shaded bar in its periphery with steel-frame bar stools with sun and moon emblems that cast cosmic shadows. After long envisioned hopes to collaborate together, Bellm enlisted London-based designer Tatjana von Stein to remodel the restaurant and conservatory just this spring. The designer, who now has a studio in Mallorca, builds upon the natural surroundings, with designs that delight in the hotel’s celestial vibes while featuring plenty of local materials and artisanal traditions. Clusters of hand-carved red Alicante and Indian Fantasy marble tables, commissioned from a local stonemason, are encircled by intimate, bespoke booths to enjoy breakfast, lunch, coffee, and cocktails. A retractable awning overhead languidly rolls in to open up the terrace, following the regular but never-not spectacular burnt orange sunsets, making things cozy for evening dinner guests. Nordic Knots rugs, tiger-print throws, and zebra-print cushions add to the golden-toned scenes inside and out.
Bellm and von Stein met 20 years ago in Ibiza, and it was over lunch on this terrace, last year, that they started scheming. “When we first opened, the hotel was my main focus,” Bellm tells me one hot morning from the cooler pink conservatory, over iced coconut matchas and date-banana smoothies. “The terrace is the first thing a lot of people see. I wanted to reinvigorate this special space we have here. Tatjana and I went on these adventures to marble quarries and for fabrics. I got to watch her hand-design everything and custom-make it. I love how it so naturally fits into the landscape. We feel so in the rhythm of the island here—it goes with the colors of the seasons, the summer sun, the snow on the mountain.”
Mallorca and the space she’s cultivated with von Stein and her team here—all natural light, golden sunsets, and sparkling seas has heavily influenced Bellm’s own creative work. It’s an evolved aesthetic that’s articulated in Bellm’s paradisiacal book, La Isla. (Now on its third edition). Other photographers and brands often book the hotel for shoots in the winter. They also host artist residencies, with the creatives making their own additions to the hotel’s vibe: L.A. artist Laura Sotowalls’s ashtrays are dotted around, the walls are adorned with an eclectic paintings, and hand-painted ceramics are in every room. (Some staff have even received tattoos from visiting artists.) Books and magazines from Lopez and Bellm’s own archive—about faith, art, and local flora—decorate the suites’ coffee tables.
“There’s no stereotype of a person here—we’ve got the super cool fashion crowd, a family from Hawaii, some bikers who just came upon us,” says Bellm. “I wanted to create a space for everyone to feel welcome that I wished for the island when I first came. Everyone is able to experience our vision of luxury.” Luxury, defined by Hotel Corazón, means panoramic views instead of wall-mounted TVs, and head chef Eliza Parchanska’s flower-adorned, heartfelt cooking, which features produce plucked from Emma Phillips’s farm just yards below the kitchen. It’s slow morning group yoga and lively guest conversations by the glittering pool, as two donkeys watch on. It’s staff that remember your favorite cocktail by the pool, drop extra bread on your table for the last swipes of hummus before you ask, and bring you rare citrus from the garden you’ve never tasted before. “The amount of engagements here is unbelievable—and the relationships formed and love stories that happen,” says Bellm. “It’s an aptly named hotel, I think.” (‘Corazón’ translates to ‘heart.’) Across dinner on my last evening, there are two birthdays and an anniversary. On my final morning, a couple quietly enjoyed their wedding breakfast.
It’s Eliza Parchanska’s second season as head chef, collaborating with farmer-in-residence Emma Philips (formerly of L.A.’s Flamingo Estate and Big Sur’s Esalen Institute) to use organic produce from the hotel’s farm. Their focus is on both cultivating sustainability and its own new culinary traditions—Bellm and I take a walk through the farm, seeing fat tomatoes and juicy peaches, as well as their first ever yield of bananas, and rare varieties of kumquats and buddha’s hand citrons, all emerging from rows of trellises and beds Philips and Bellm have worked hard to upkeep. Parchanska says her mission has always been to create a healthy seasonal menu using local products that elevates the hotel’s food offering from the rest of the island, blending her Eastern European background with Mallorcan cuisine.
“Cooking in an open kitchen on a mountaintop with a view of the Tramontana is really something else,” Parchanska says. She makes use of local organic suppliers too, with grains, seeds, and nuts from Va de Bio, and artisanal sourdough from Forn de Barri bakery. Having Emma, who grows the greens and the edible flowers, is “another luxury that we extensively exploit on our menu.”
“I really enjoy getting to know a place by its food,” Parchanska continues. “So when I first got to Mallorca, I tried to immerse myself as much as I could in the traditions and the dishes of the island. I got lucky enough that my first landlord in Mallorca was a former baker who loved cooking for her family, so I definitely got some tricks from her.”
This year’s new menu grows with the seasons—and what the team enjoy—and expands the vegetarian and seafood offering, all topped with Parchanska’s signature edible flowers: squash blossoms, rose petals, purple chive blossoms, delicate pansies, tangy marigolds. Corazón classics include the shredded kale salad with roasted dates and a rich peanut sauce, and a buttermilk fried chicken sandwich with creamy slaw and fresh farm herbs. Breakfast on the terrace is a meditative experience, augmented by a green goddess bowl or a yogurt bowl with Parchanska’s homemade granola (she promises me they’ll start jarring and selling it soon) with garden berries. Eating al fresco in the evening, slow-roasted red peppers slick with anchovies are mopped up with thick wedges of toasted sourdough, and a dessert sundae dressed with an almond butter and soy sauce fudge is eaten quickly in the night heat. I’m lucky I’m only steps away from my room and the crisp pink linen sheets to sleep it all off.
“We are surrounded by stunning nature, the wildest and sweetest animals, and a really inspiring environment of people,” says Parchanska. “Oh, and the music playlists are always on point.” Indeed, breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the terrace is soundtracked by blissed out Balearic tunes, a sun-soaked playlist oscillating from Strawberry Switchblade to Bonnie Rait and BadBadNotGood.
Across the island, it feels like there’s a renewed focus on Mallorca’s homegrown fare and contemporary plays on classics. Since 2020, at Farm To Table Mallorca, Michelin-trained chef Andy and Gosia Ciempiel champion fresh, seasonal produce from Mallorcan farmers, serving dishes family-style among the vineyard and tall sunflowers; a slow-roasted leg of lamb wrapped in bay leaves, herby farm-made lemonade, and a nectarine consommé gazpacho inspired by the summer harvests. In Sóller, Mister McCoy’s Island Ices offers natural wine and white peach and rose masala soda, with ice-cream and sorbet flavors day by day that span geranium rosato, white nectarine, and black cherry. By the water, Blai Bar is both a local and fashion crowd favorite—I miss London DHPR founder Daisy Hoppen by less than a day there—who come for natural and local wines; sourdough toast thick with labneh, anchovies, and peppers; hulking gildas; and a cheesecake with a hint of blue cheese and poached quince. At Hotel Corazón, these sensibilities of the island coalesce.
Nearby Deià and its surroundings have long drawn in artists and writers—from David Bowie to Jimi Hendrix and Robert Graves—as a tranquil place to seek refuge and create. Graves, who moved to Mallorca in 1929, once wrote of his adopted home: “The Majorcan countryside is not at all a place to go in search of inspiration; but admirable for people whose minds already teem with ideas that need recording in absolute quiet.” Hotel Corazón has even more growing to do: Bellm, inspired by recent trips to Scandinavia, hopes to expand their already excellent wellness offerings with a sauna in the future, and evening film screenings have just started up again. It’s by-artists, for-artists enclave, where the impassioned spirit of Graves’s words all those years ago inflects everything.
