Wickedly seductive cuisine

By Roberto Perrone

Island cooking has a primitive quality harking back to the best of Italy's traditions.

Maybe because its mountain towering skyward doesn't correspond to the traditional idea of an island, maybe because of its blend of sea and earth, <%=ischia%> still has something primitive and wild about it, though now, thanks to the meeting with modernity, it has become a unique place from the point of view of gastronomic flavours. It is not just a question of impressions - there are evident links between the various Italian gastronomic tradition. As I tuck into <%=ischia%>-style rabbit cooked in a clay pot with garlic, onion and cherry tomatoes at “Damiano's”, I am reminded of the Cinta Senese pigs and the revival of ancient traditions underway all over Italy.
In the early 20th century, there used to be thousands of wild rabbits on the slopes of Mount Epomeo. This is the reason for the island's hunting tradition and for the revival - after years of neglect, just like the case of Cinta Senese pigs - of rabbit farming, except that now the rabbits are kept in large pits and feed on the grass that grows there. <%=ischia%>-style rabbit is also on the menu in two restaurants with a lovely view at the top of the mountain, to be reached on foot or astride a donkey. Besides rabbit dishes, “Damiano” also offers free-range chickens, kept behind the restaurant, and a mixed grill of beef and pork (and fish as well, of course). Starting from this year, only “fosso” (pit) rabbits will be served.
The cuisine is based on land specialities but also on seafood, because the waters all around abound in fish. In <%=ischia%>, fish never lets you down. Salvatore, known as Cocò, can take his pick from the crates full of fish unloaded by fishermen who have just brought in their boats a few steps away from his restaurant. The same seafood is served with a rigatoni dish called Alberto after another good restaurant in the port, featuring Gragnano pasta with prawns, capers, olives and cherry tomatoes.

Rich flavours of earth and sea - the term “primitive” does not debase but on the contrary celebrates the respect of the Italian food tradition, in which meals are an unforgettable moment and require generous portions. You will find this even in the elaborate dishes presented at “Il Melograno” in Forio, where mezzemaniche pasta with amberjack, capers and olives is served in lavish portions with an eye to modern cuisine but also to the needs of travellers on a gastronomic tour who wish to prolong it as long as possible.
The fish arrives every day, the Japanese once a year. They go to eat at Gaetano Fazio's because he once went to Japan to make pizza and was a great hit there. He even has fan clubs named after him. Groups of ten to fifteen Japanese at a time come to learn the art of making pizza - at least they don't have to join the monstrously long queues waiting for a “pizza Margherita”. One can also avoid the queues by exploring other places, like Ciro and Anna Calise's “Don Michele”, once called “La Terrazza”. Here too creative cookery with an eye to tradition predominates, and in the summer the restaurant moves to the Giardini Eden on the rocks of Sant'Anna. You can be sure of always eating very fresh, high-quality fish when destiny provides you with incontrovertible evidence - the owners of the restaurant “Ida” on Maronti beach (where they serve castagna fish with capers and potatoes) are called Pesce (fish)… “nomen, omen” (Latin for: the name augurs well).
“Monfalcone” in Casamicciola offers excellent cuisine at a reasonable price in a nineteenth-century palazzo. Strangely enough for an island, we have proceeded in the opposite direction from most visitors, from the mountain to the sea, from the centre to the exterior, as if sensing the importance of a centre of gravity.

And now we can appreciate the island's social life, the inevitable promenade with an obligatory stop in the Cafeteria in the Corso where Girolamo and Chantal have established the custom of the evening aperitif. From seven o'clock on, they offer a place to nibble at titbits, chat, exchange glances and try new drinks.

When darkness falls, we take it as an invitation to continue our adventure with a drink by candlelight in Sant'Angelo, at the Tavernetta, with background piano music in a setting of traditional pottery exhibits, or on the Gran Caffè Vittoria's terrace on the Corso, where all the islanders pass on their way to take part in the <%=ischia%> nightlife ceremony celebrated by Cesare Di Scala. Those who don't want to leave empty-handed after having experienced the charm of <%=ischia%> can buy the typical local cake made with figs and nuts in the Calice pastry shop in Casamicciola, or visit the “Antichi sapori ischitani” delicatessen in the port of <%=ischia%>, “<%=ischia%> Sapori” in Corso Vittoria Colonna, Enoteca Di Meglio in Salita San Pietro, the “Cantina” in Casamicciola and the “Me gusta” in Forio. Specialities such as limoncello, babà, melanù (a liqueur made with annurca apples), extra-virgin olive oil with lemon flavouring, jams and jellies, spices and local wines (D'Ambra, Pietratorcia and Perrazzo are the best-known labels). What more can one say? Maybe it all depends on the hot springs, maybe they deliberately set about balancing this mixture of earth and sea flavours, so primitive and modern that it has an effect of diabolical seduction. And in fact quite a few visitors to <%=ischia%> come away having sold their souls to the devil to preserve the island's flavours.

Roberto Perrone, journalist for the Corriere della Sera