Sardinia Food: A Taste Discovery

Last weekend me and the other half jetted off to Alghero in Sardinia or Sardegna Italy as the locals call it, for the weekend. Although this was one of my Christmas pressies I still found out how much was spent and it was a minuscule 30 Euro each for return flights direct from Dublin, that’s as much as the bus to Donegal! Cheap as chips with Ryan Air as long as you don’t mind the lack of service.

Sardinia used to be a Spanish colony until a revolt took place and it became part of the ‘Kingdom of Italy’ as it was know 1861. Our B&B host told us that Catalonian is still spoken in Sardinia but that he thinks it will die out within then next 20 years or so as it isn’t taught in schools anymore. The city is walled with look out towers and this was to protect Sardinia from invaders and pirates in the 1600′s when the Spanish ruled the roost.

The capitol of Sardinia is Cagliari but as mentioned we went for Alghero in the north west of the island.The city is pretty small, but for a couple of days it’s perfect. We spent ages wondering around the old city part of Alghero looking for Sardinia restaurants to eat in and drink wine. When we were chatting to the host at our B&B about Sardinia cuisine he told us about a dish called pasta Al Ricci (pronounced ri-chee). Pasta Al Ricci is a dish that is very popular in Alghero made from the meat found inside a sea urchin, dosen’t sound too great right? Well my girlfriend didn’t think so either, but I made a bee line straight to the first restaurant I could find that had it advertised on a board outside which happened to be a great place called Nettuno where I promptly ordered a bowl. With it being low season they must not have been expecting people at 2.30 in the afternoon or maybe the chef was on his lunch break but the food took quite a while to arrive, while we were waiting though the staff brought us up some fresh bruschetta topped with garlic oil, parsley and either cured salmon or diced tomato free of charge and it was delicious! But finally the long awaited Al Ricci arrived, the best way to describe it is to say that it tastes like the smell of fresh sea air. Not the stale, fishy smell you get most of the time, but the almost salty, mineral aroma you get from a walk along the beach added to that the garlic and parsley and fresh pasta it was served with and I was in heaven, my girlfriend on the other hand was not too taken aback with this dish, but I don’t think it’s for everyone.

Throughout our weekend in Alghero we spent our time drinking beautiful coffee to get over our hangover, eating home made pasta and drinking Alghero wine. We found a great bar Called Diva Bar in the old city area run by a great guy called Giovanni who tried his best to have a conversation with my drunk self and my even more drunk girlfriend in broken English. All in all though places here can be quite hit or miss as we had a couple of sub standard meals and bad service. I can also see that Alghero and Sardinia in general would be an amazing place in summer, but of course you’ll be paying premium rates to get there and there will be a lot more people around, May or October would be the best times to get over here. This is definitely the place to be for fresh seafood with great Sardinia restaurants such as Maristella on Via Kennedy that serve until late and have multi lingual staff that make you feel welcome, best to ask hotel and B&B staff where to eat as all the advise we got was pretty sound.

So now to plan our next adventure, Mexico! Only seven weeks to go and I can’t wait, but Italy has got me hooked and I’ll be going back when I next get a chance to find out more about a cuisine that I never thought too much about but would now kill for!