Concrete and cedar above Cala Gració

OKU Ibiza is built into a slope above the bay of Cala Gració, on the west coast, a few minutes north of Sant Antoni. The name comes from oku, a Japanese idea of inner space, and the architecture argues the point in raw concrete and red cedar screens, with rattan, linen, almost no colour and the odd piece of art. Minimal, purist, expensive without saying so. We booked it blind on the strength of OKU Andalusia, at Sotogrande, which we loved. The hotel runs from mid-April to mid-October.

Teyo, Mark Vaessen's Nikkei

There are two restaurants, the same pair as in Andalusia. To Kima handles breakfast and lunch; Teyo opens at 19:30 for Nikkei — sushi, tempura, robata, wagyu — on menus written by Mark Vaessen, who came from Sushisamba. Book that one. Everything we ate was very good, some of it new to us, and the prices match the ambition. Breakfast is excellent as well. Worth knowing before you go: if you have stayed at another OKU, the menu is the same, dish for dish. The quality holds; the discovery doesn't.

Fifty metres of water, and a DJ until six

The main pool runs fifty metres, among the largest on the island, and the hotel is arranged around it — gym, spa and juice bar on the edges, a resident DJ playing every afternoon from 14:00 to 18:00. Wednesdays bring Pool Sessions, with guest DJs, live acts and non-residents allowed in. The pool is adults-only, and so is the spa: five treatment rooms, a couples suite, yoga daily. Travelling as a couple or with friends, that is the whole appeal. The second pool, the family one, is open to every age — sun loungers and little else, quiet by comparison.

With a nine-month-old

We came for two nights on the way back from Formentera, to rest before the flight home. Standard rooms sleep two, which made three of us one too many and moved us up to a Deluxe Junior Suite; cots are free under two. We hadn't planned to upgrade, but the room was ideal — floor enough for him to crawl end to end. High chairs, children's menus, staff who could not have been kinder, and we were the only guests in the hotel with a baby. Plan for the stroller: there are steps to carry it up, to breakfast and again to the main restaurant. If you want to walk somewhere, Cala Gracioneta is three minutes from Cala Gració, along the path behind the fishermen's huts. I'd go back for a wellness retreat, or a few days as a couple. Not with children.