Chilled Ibiza: Experience the Ultimate Sunset Mix

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And with Hilton’s Curio Collection no longer running the show, the Experimental Group has taken over, opening a recharged restaurant designed by Dorothée Meilichzon this summer and bedrooms next year. Another example of this is Petunia, where I stopped one evening for dinner on a terrace with mesmeric views of the rocky islet Es Vedrà. Everything was still in post-Covid recovery mode and a strange, faintly dazed feeling was detectable. My stomping ground was always the rural north: the hills and villages around Santa Inés, San Juan and Cala San Vicente. As an indication of just how far it is from blaring techno around the pool, there are plans to host a classical music event here next year.

Here, the reinvention effort was a labour of love, taking an Eighties, plain-Jane family hotel to the next level with a total overhaul, a fine, Italian-inflected restaurant in La Mesa Escondida, wonderful gardens and rooftop tables for soaking up the extraordinary panorama.It reminded me that even as one generation moans about how much more magical and idyllic Ibiza was in their day, successive generations are already finding new sources of magic and idyll. As I traversed the island, I found plenty to confound my expectations as well as stir up long-dormant memories.

Today the space, renamed El Silencio by its new French owners, has morphed into a sand-on-the-floor seaside restaurant with gorgeous wabi-sabi-like styling, a pool out back and a menu by young-gun chef Jean Imbert, known as the Jamie Oliver of France.With rustic rattan, washed-out linen and sandy floors, Jondal, on the cala of the same name, is Ibiza’s restaurant of the moment, no contest. I drove back west to a place that has lingered in a corner of my mind for a quarter of a century: Punta Galera, where the natural terraces of smooth rock act as shelves for sunbathing like a lizard. On the night I was there, drinking cold fino sherry and nibbling burrata with olives and juicy figs, the soundtrack was a Brazilian guitarist playing soft bossa nova. The organic produce at HaSalon at The Piazza restaurant – helmed by Eyal Shani, the founding father of new Israeli cuisine – is sourced from the company’s farm outside Santa Gertrudis.

On the walk down through the forest, balsamic scents of heat-baked pine and rosemary flung open the synapses of my memory.On a hot day it bustles with beautiful people who come for chef Rafa Zafra’s impeccably prepared fish and shellfish. Along the road, sun-faded nightclub billboards advertising the closing parties of October 2019 seemed like messages from another world. The dark-green hillsides dotted with farmhouses in the typical white- washed, cuboid style; the tiendas selling everything from sandals to sardines; the clouds of chalky dust that billowed up on the bumpy tracks among the pines.

For 10 whole years, I reflected, something very similar to this view of beams and rough-hewn plaster was what I gazed at. I stood on my balcony and took in the sight below: a beauteous pool, bright young things lounging in swimwear, the gentle thud of house music.The design ditches the all-white aesthetic traditionally synonymous with Ibiza in favour of earthy, neutral tones, stone, linen and acres of grey concrete.