GULF OF OROSEI, SARDINIA Italy
The dramatic coastline of this Italian island is met by a landscape that seems to have been forgotten by time in the best way possible, with traditional villages, abundant wild herbs and a people fuelled by its legendary home-style cooking
Granite hills dotted with mysterious, ‘beehive’ stones, rocky cliffs, isolated caves and lovely coves are the backdrop to the beautiful, luminescent waters of the Gulf of Orosei, midway along Sardinia’s eastern coast. Small, peaceful Cala Gonone, a three-hour scenic drive from the airport lies on its shore. Artists, potters and leather-workers live in nearby unspoilt villages, surrounded by rocky upland scrub of myrtle, wild herbs, dwarf oaks and lentisk, criss-crossed with the well-worn paths of magnificently horned mouflone (wild sheep).
This little-changed landscape has sustained life – in fact, long healthy life – for centuries. The restaurants are mostly attached to small hotels: in Cala Gonone’s Hotel L’Oasi loasihotel.com and Hotel Miramare htlmiramare.it you’ll find home-style cooking, with dishes such as cheese croquettes, crudo ham, fried squid and pasta, and ingredients sourced from the local cooperatives of shepherds and fishermen; in Bue Marino hotelbuemarino.it dishes of octopus, prawns, swordfish and sea bream. In the harbour, small ferries for dolphin- and whale-watching and trips to the isolated southern beaches dock alongside brightly painted fishing boats; watch the action from the terrace of the Hotel Dorada hotelcostadorada.it (to stay: choose a quieter back room).
Just above Cala Gonone, in the village of Serra Orrios, lie two marvellous nuraghes – bronze-age, beehive-shaped basalt stones from extinct volcanoes. No one knows why, or by whom, the thousands of these nuraghes, some 2.5 metres tall, were built as there are no written records, but they do explain an ancient, colloquial name for this part of Sardinia, ‘the land of giants’. Further inland, often along roads in name only, time seems to stand still. Horsemanship, weaving and woodcraft are still-active local skills, eagles swoop far above and shepherds keep a watchful eye on their goats and sheep.
You’ll come across farmhouses here where you can eat, so take the chance to try some of the many local small-production cheeses if you can: mild sheep-milk dolmen, serra orrios, galanu and pranos; the Pecorino-like distintu, tinnias; Ricotta-esque chimeras; and goat’s milk caprabella, montes and frue. Sheltered by his cuile, a traditional hut, a shepherd can live off the land for weeks, with wild herbs, small game, mushrooms, honey from the fruits of the wild strawberry tree and pane carasau, or shepherd’s bread – a thin, crisp flatbread. Smallholdings grow wheat and barley (for dense, chewy local breads), olives and fruit and vegetables like courgettes, salad leaves, tomatoes, figs and grapes – to sell in Cala Gonone.
The formidable coastline – one that put off even the Romans from invading, although not the Byzantines, Goths or Barbary pirates – hides a rich flora. Mirto, a digestif liqueur unique to Sardinia and nearby Corsica, is made from the berries of the wild myrtle, which are macerated for at least four months in neat alcohol, then crushed, and their juice is then added to sugar syrup and the macerating liquor. Myrtle also flavours a local feast-day dish of roast suckling pig. Spit-roasted for three hours, slathered with olive oil and herbs, it’s served with aplomb on an avaione, a bark platter favoured by shepherds as it can be rinsed off and left to dry hanging from a tree, ready for the next meal.
A half-hour drive north of Cala Gonone takes you to the spectacular, labyrinthine stalactite- and stalagmite-filled grottos of Ispinigoli, discovered by shepherds just 70 years ago. Nearby, from the terrace of the Hotel Ispinigoli hotelispinigoli.it platters of charcuterie and cheeses are well matched by wines of the locally favoured cannonau (grenache) grape – red, dry and sometimes fortified – and the dramatic, background scenery.
There’s no shortage of remarkable sights in and around Cala Gonone, including those on the table. Pottery is decorated with ancient motifs of harvest or fertility and local life is still ‘on the plate’. Dishes are simple and uncomplicated, unlike the centuriesold (and no longer eaten) festive mallori de su sabatleri, a calf stuffed with a goat that’s stuffed with a suckling pig, but a local toast is the same: ‘to the way of life, the food of life’.