Cristal — Restaurant in Alcúdia

Food was okay but a bit overpriced. You can only pay in CASH. They don’t accept card payments. If you don’t have cash with you, you’ll have to walk to the nearest ATM and it has a high fee for withdrawal. We paid 5 euros in fees for withdrawing 60 euros.

You are not told in advance about the cash only policy. There were no signs, no one told us about it. I don’t even remember anything written down on the menu about it. But when it came to paying for the meal, the waiter informed us that we can only pay in cash, I refused, since it must be declared in advance to the customers if the payment can only be made in cash. The waiter went and brought a menu, where “only cash” was written down at one of the pages, in a weird font, which would be hard to notice… And to be honest, I am convinced that the menu we were given in the beginning when ordering did not have that text on. I can’t be 100% sure of that, but I looked a long time on the menu since I was trying to make sure that what I was ordering was vegan, and I never noticed the “only cash” text there.

Anyway, maybe it is very common to pay in cash in Spain, but if the business has restrictions regarding the payment methods, it MUST be clearly stated to the customers from the start. I have visited many restaurants and cafes in Mallorca, and I never had this problem. I could always pay with the card.

Also, I was asking the waiter about the ingredients in some of the dishes, since I have some dietary restrictions. She was not very informed about which ingredients were used, and I felt like she did not really care about helping me find something suitable.

So I would not visit this place if I’m...

What a great experience! „Cristal“ is easy to find in the old town of Alcùdia, right in a beautiful little alley near the big plaza. Inside you can find a stylish and cozy interior with an roofless inside terrace. We sat outside and the waiter (the tall, brunette one) was super friendly, professional but still casual and authentic and helped us with any questions with knowledge about the food.

We ordered tapas and sangria and everything was delightful! Jamon serrano in a high quality, grilled and salted piementos de padron, fresh and spicy Albondigas, beautiful warm and buttery garlicbread, as always olives and ajioli. The Shrimps in garlic and oil were smaller ones but lots of them and the cooking level was spot on. Good menu with lots of options with high quality products and beautiful plating with quite big portions, accommodating service, pretty surrounding and ambience. Also a fair price for this experience and quality!

We enjoyed this as our last meal on Mallorca before our flight back home and want to thank you for this beautiful and absolutely delicious dinner in Alcùdia! This is one of my favourite memories of this vacation.

Lots of love from Germany - I will...

We visited this place because it had a good rating on Google Maps. Now we are asking ourselves where this rating comes from. Aioli was horrible - so watery. And we didnt even want to order it but the waiter convinced us. The paella and the sausages were ok, nothing special. Sangria was even more horrible than the aioli. Thank God I only ordered one glass. The waiter kept on insisting on ordering a white one though, I guess because it's more expensive (why?) than the red one. Anyway, sangria tasted as if it was made out of cheap wine. The beer we ordered didnt arrive so we had to order it twice after having been waiting for a while for our first ordered beer. The service was also tremendously slow. It literally took them 20 or 30 minutes to serve the aioli - not to mention the rest. The table near us was served first even though they came much later. There was also too much staff standing around doing nothing. This place is just a well-presented overpriced touristic trap....