Every sunset bar on earth owes something to this one. Café del Mar opened its doors on June 20, 1980, in Sant Antoni’s Caló des Moro bay, and by the early ’90s resident DJ José Padilla had turned the evening sunset set into a genre unto itself: the soft, atmospheric sound the world now calls chillout, or Balearic beats. The first compilation album dropped in 1994; more than 30 volumes and 12 million copies later, Café del Mar is still the reason “sunset bar” is a category of bar at all. Padilla passed in 2020, but his sets still echo through the terrace’s speakers most evenings. Get here early. The front row carries a minimum spend and fills up fast. Order something cold, and watch the entire Mediterranean turn the color of a dying ember while the original sound of Ibiza does what it’s always done.
