REAL FLAVOR, CHARACTER AT TRISTAN ON MAJORCA

Just southwest of Palma on the island of Majorca, off the coast of Spain in the western Mediterranean, there is a 2-year-old yacht-filled marina complex known as Puerto Portals.

In that complex, in a two-story terra-cotta-and-white building surrounded by cool arcades, is Tristan, a breezily attractive little restaurant owned by an Italian-born chef with a German-sounding name who serves contemporary French-style food of the highest order. It is the best restaurant on the island, and one of the best in Spain--but concierges and cab drivers and at least some other restaurateurs claim to have never heard of it.

It’s rather new, open only since July--but this is a rather small island, and, frankly, not one overendowed with fine eating places. “Some of the other people on Majorca are a bit jealous,” said maitre d’hotel Marco DiLoreto. “They are not used to a restaurant like this.”

Indeed not, and with good reason: The aforementioned Italian-born chef is Heinz Winkler, from Bresanone in the Dolomites, near the Austrian-Italian border. Tristan is his second restaurant. His first is Tantris in Munich, to which the Guide Michelin gives three stars. Winkler isn’t permanently in residence in Puerto Portals, but he does make frequent visits--and the chef in charge, Tantris veteran Gerd Schweiger, represents his cooking admirably. That cooking is light, delicate, simple and highly controlled--but it isn’t sissy food. It has real flavor, real character. It also has too much salt--but this is Spain, after all.

Thin fillets of monkfish, for instance, are pounded and then poached in plastic bags that leave them moist and intact, and served warm in a frothy chive-flavored cream sauce with a thatch of match-stick potatoes on top for texture. Most of Winkler’s, and thus Schweiger’s, sauces froth a bit. Because they’re not thickened with anything, said Tristan manager Mario Gamba, they’re given a last-minute tumble in a blender to add body.

Pieces of carpaccio -like marinated beef drape almost meltingly over a bed of earthy-tasting white mushrooms, cut into inch-long sticks. A quail salad involves the same mushrooms, plus finely diced and very sweet tomatoes, but is mainly an excuse for the exquisitely flavorful quail meat itself and for the assertive vinaigrette in which it is bathed. Round, almost translucent little ravioli, stuffed with dark wild mushrooms, luxuriate in a bright-green parsley sauce, as fresh and peppery as a bite of parsley itself.

Winkler and his crew use local products whenever possible, and are particularly fond of Majorcan lamb and vegetables and of fish from the nearby Costa Brava. In the former category, Tristan offers a perfect little lamb rack, roasted pink and perfumed with thyme, and a dish of thin lamb slices in sweet red pepper butter, wonderfully tender and fine--both with an array of excellent vegetables, including pureed celery and little wedges of potato cake. One remarkable fish dish is lubina or sea bass in lime-spiked brown butter, graced (echoes of those match-stick potatoes) with a scattering of tiny, golden-brown croutons, no more than an eighth of an inch in diameter.

Among the elaborate desserts are a subtle, semi-sweet mocha mousse with walnut sauce and a spectacular dish dubbed albondigas rellenos con nougat --”meatballs” of fresh white cheese stuffed with sweet dark nougat, lightly breaded and fried and served warm in a frothy cream sauce with shreds of fresh strawberry.

There is a good wine list, with a number of first-rate Spanish bottles and some pricey possibilities from Italy, France and Germany. The restaurant in general is fiercely expensive by Spanish standards, with appetizers at $15 to $18 and main dishes at $25 or so.

There is also a genuine sommelier, a ruddy-faced lad from Alsace named Patrick. “I suppose I must be the only sommelier on the island,” he said--and I suppose he must be right.

Tristan, Puerto Portals (Portals Nous), Majorca; telephone (71) 68.25.00.