Cinque Terre refers to Cinque Terre National Park, five towns on the west coast of Italy. The towns are connected by hiking trails, and there is nothing better than hiking along the Mediterranean coast for a whole day and then dining at an authentic Italian trattoria for some fresh seafood and home-made pasta.
It was in Manarola that we discovered the best food we would have in all of Italy. We randomly walked into this restaurant for lunch – the restaurant was no different from any of the other dozen restaurants along the street, except that it was quite busy – which is usually a good sign.
Service was quick (by European standards) and friendly, and soon we were served with a large deep-fried seafood platter with calamari, prawns, squid, and anchovies.
The seafood could not have been more fresh, the batter was light and did not soak a lot of oil, and everything was fried to perfection. The squid was unreal.
I had a trofie with sea bass in tomato sauce. The trofie was definitely made in-house, perfectly chewy. The sea bass was tender and delicious, and my only complaint was that there wasn’t more of it. The tomato sauce was somewhat uninspired, but this was honest to goodness Italian home-cooking, straight-forward and uncomplicated.
Best gnocchi I’ve ever had, no doubt about it. Pesto sauce was also quite good. Again, simple, uncomplicated, delicious.
I don’t remember exactly what this was, possibly a mussle soup. No complaints from any of my trip-mates, so I assume it was also satisfactory.
I don’t remember what this was, tuna salad perhaps?
Seafood spaghetti came with plenty of seafood and perfectly cooked home-made spaghetti.
We also ordered a lobster pasta of some sort that was delicious, the lobster-infused tomato sauce was unreal.
After this extremely satisfactory meal, we decided to eat out again in Manarola for dinner. We went to the restaurant across the street, which boasted “whole large lobster” on its menu. Thinking that the restaurant across the street couldn’t be that different, we decided to try it. We were wrong. The seafood here was not as fresh as the seafood in the first restaurant. Moreover, they didn’t seem to take as much care in preparing the food.
The grilled calamari and squid was basically uneatable. The calamari was hard and rubbery (note the difference between ‘chewy’ – which is ideal, and ‘rubbery’ – which is not), and the squid was so fishy I immediately spat it out.
Lobster ravioli sat better with my friend, although still a little fishy if you ask me.
Whole large lobster with pappardelle ended up being half large lobster with pappardelle. The dish was the most successful out of the ones I tried. Pappardelle is broad fettucine. At least it was made in-house and had a good chew to it.
The next day, I searched high and low for ‘farinata’ – chickpea focaccia, the internet tells me – but it was sold out in the two shops that sold it in Vernazza. So instead, I settled on pizza for lunch.
We did end up finding farinata in La Spezia, but it was soggy and tasted awful. There were many locals buying it too, so we thought maybe that was what farinata was, although why it was so popular escaped me. After a quick Internet search, it turns out farinata is supposed to be crispy, so I guess the place we went to had it all wrong. As did the locals that were actually eating that stuff.