Carloforte

Carloforte is an island off an island — the only town on San Pietro, settled in the eighteenth century by Ligurian coral-fishers returning from the Tunisian island of Tabarka. They brought a language, Tabarchino, still spoken in the streets, and a kitchen unlike anywhere else in Sardinia: Genoese pesto and farinata meet North African couscous (cascà) and, above all, the bluefin tuna of the spring tonnara. Tuna is worked here nose to tail — belt-fishing, salting, the bottarga and mosciamme — and the town's restaurants treat it with reverence. Pastel Ligurian house-fronts, a palm-lined waterfront and that triple Genoese-Tabarchino-Sardinian inheritance make it one of the Mediterranean's true culinary curiosities.