A foodie's guide to the best restaurants in Sardinia
Sardinia gets under your skin. I’m not the only person to have felt it. The renowned food writer Claudia Roden said: ‘I don’t know if it is because Sardinians are unbelievably hospitable, and their land is so beautiful, or because their food evokes a remote past, or because it is simply so good, but it provokes a strong emotion of the kind you never forget.’
Separated from Italy by language, culture, history and geography, this idiosyncratic island, lost in the Mediterranean, has much to offer any hungry traveller searching for something a little less ordinary. The food culture is, like the place itself, theoretically Italian, but really a world unto itself. While they both share some essential philosophies – the focus on ingredients and extreme freshness, the peasant roots that make each dish simultaneously comforting and abundant – Sardinian food seems a distilled version; somehow even simpler, more rustic, more wild. The emphasis on tradition is even more pronounced. Food is never just food. It is a memory, a moment recaptured in a mouthful. It is friendship, love, celebration. Often today, it is easy to lose sight of this. In Sardinia it is not.
I first visited when I was 18, on a holiday with a friend’s family. We stayed in a remote villa in the north, and my most potent memory was the night I dragged everyone out to the local agriturismo, where we, the only guests, feasted on ricotta ravioli in fresh tomato sauce, roast suckling pig, raw artichokes with home- pressed olive oil for dunking, and then deep-fried cheese pasta with honey and orange zest, all rounded off with myrtle liqueur. Every single thing we ate was made or produced on the farm, and it couldn’t have been simpler, or more delicious. It didn’t feel strange to be the only diners, as we were made not to feel like customers at all, rather friends at the family dinner table.
I moved to the island three years ago. Since then, I’ve realised many things; about myself, about eating, about cooking. Far too trite to say I found myself – I didn’t anyway – but I found my food, and that’s a pretty good place to start.
‘Bitter Honey: Recipes and Stories from the Island of Sardinia’ by Letitia Clark (£26; Hardie Grant) is out now