There are two entirely different dinners available here and they are about ten minutes’ drive apart.
One is on the water at Porto Cervo, with lit yachts behind you, excellent fish, and a bill that will make a particular impression. The other is up in the granite hills at a farmhouse with a vine over the terrace, where you do not order because there is nothing to order from, and four courses and wine arrive for less than a starter costs on the quay.
Both are good. Only one of them is Sardinian, and it is not the one on the water.
The quayside version
The restaurants along the marina and in the village at Porto Cervo are expensive in a way that is worth being unsentimental about. You are paying for the position, and the position is genuinely spectacular.
At the top end there is a Michelin-starred kitchen in the village, and there are one or two seafood tables on the quay that families have been returning to for thirty years and which are booked out weeks ahead in August. That level is very good indeed and priced accordingly.
Below that there is a broad middle of perfectly decent fish restaurants where a dinner for two with wine runs somewhere between €120 and €250, and where what you are getting is a good plate of fish and a view of boats. Nothing wrong with it. Just know what the money is buying.
Book. Everything on the quay needs booking from mid-July, and turning up at half past eight in August without a reservation is how you end up eating a sandwich.
The other kind of dinner, ten minutes inland
Drive up into the hills behind the coast and the food changes completely, because the food up there is Gallurese, and Gallura is a shepherding region rather than a fishing one.
The places to look for are the stazzi: old granite farmsteads, several of which now run as restaurants. There is usually no menu. A set sequence arrives, generally starting with a long spread of antipasti, moving through a pasta, and arriving eventually at meat, and the meat is very often porceddu, suckling pig roasted slowly until the skin goes to glass.
Prices sit around €35 to €50 a head with wine included, which for the quantity of food involved is close to absurd.
Two of the long-established ones are La Colti near Cannigione and Lu Stazzu, and there are others up around Arzachena and San Pantaleo. Book, because they fill with locals as well as visitors, and go hungry, because there is no polite way to decline the fourth course.
This is the meal I would drive back to Sardinia for.
What to order that is actually Sardinian
Porceddu. Suckling pig, roasted long and slow, sometimes over myrtle. The centrepiece of any inland meal.
Seadas. The one to insist on. A large pastry parcel filled with fresh unaged cheese, fried, and served with dark honey poured over it while it is still too hot to touch. The cheese is faintly sour and the honey is often bitter corbezzolo honey, and the combination should not work as well as it does.
Zuppa gallurese. Despite the name it is not a soup. It is layers of stale bread, cheese and broth baked until the top crusts, and it is the regional dish of exactly these hills.
Bottarga. Cured grey mullet roe, grated over pasta. More an eastern and western Sardinian thing than a Gallura one, but it is on every menu here and it is very good.
Pane carasau. The thin crisp sheet bread that arrives at the start of everything.
What to skip, or at least not to go looking for: culurgiones, the pleated potato and mint ravioli, belong to Ogliastra on the other side of the island. They are on menus here because tourists ask for them.
The wine, which is the region’s one real claim
Vermentino di Gallura is the only DOCG wine on Sardinia, the single appellation on the island at the top classification, and it is grown in these hills rather than shipped in from somewhere else. That is a genuine local claim rather than a marketing one, and it is the thing to drink here.
It is dry, faintly saline, with a slight bitterness at the end that suits fish and suits the heat. A good bottle in a restaurant runs €20 to €35; the house carafe at a farmhouse is included in the set price and is usually perfectly good.
There are wineries in the hills between Arzachena and Porto Cervo that run tours and tastings by appointment, and a morning at one is a genuinely pleasant use of a day that is too windy for the beach. Book ahead rather than turning up.
For red, Cannonau is the island’s grape, heavier than you want at lunch in August and very good in the evening.
Eating cheaply, which is entirely possible
The supermarkets in Arzachena, Cannigione and Olbia are ordinary Italian supermarkets at ordinary Italian prices, and the single most useful habit on this coast is buying lunch in one. Bread, tomatoes, pecorino, prosciutto, fruit, a large bottle of water. Beach lunches on the Costa Smeralda are otherwise either a long walk back to a bar or a very expensive club plate.
Away from the marina, in Arzachena and the inland villages, a pizza is a pizza and costs what a pizza costs anywhere in Italy.
And the bakeries are worth a detour on their own for the bread and the pastries, particularly early.
How I would spend a week’s dinners
Two nights inland at farmhouses. One night on the quay at Porto Cervo, booked, and treated as the expensive evening it is. One night at a good ordinary fish restaurant in Cannigione or Baja Sardinia, which is where you get the fish without the marina surcharge. The rest bought in a supermarket and eaten on a terrace, which on a warm September evening is not a compromise at all.
The full arithmetic of a week, dinners included, is in what the Costa Smeralda actually costs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should you eat on the Costa Smeralda?
Split it. Eat once or twice on the quay at Porto Cervo for the setting and the fish, and eat the rest of the week at the farmhouse restaurants in the granite hills ten minutes inland, where a set menu of four courses with wine runs €35 to €50 a head and the cooking is the region’s own.
What food is Sardinia known for?
In this corner of the island: porceddu, suckling pig roasted slowly; seadas, a fried cheese pastry with honey; zuppa gallurese, a baked layered bread and cheese dish; bottarga, cured mullet roe grated over pasta; and pane carasau, the thin crisp sheet bread. Culurgiones are Sardinian but belong to a different region.
How much is dinner on the Costa Smeralda?
On the marina at Porto Cervo, €120 to €250 for two with wine at a decent fish restaurant, and considerably more at the top tables. At a farmhouse restaurant inland, €35 to €50 per person for a full set menu with wine included. In Arzachena or Cannigione, ordinary Italian prices.
What wine should you drink in Gallura?
Vermentino di Gallura, which is the only DOCG appellation on Sardinia and is grown in the hills directly behind this coast. It is dry, faintly saline and slightly bitter at the finish, and it suits both the fish and the heat. Cannonau is the island’s red and is better in the evening than at lunch.
Do you need to book restaurants on the Costa Smeralda?
Yes, from mid-July, and emphatically so in August. That includes the farmhouse restaurants inland and not only the quayside ones, since several of them run to a handful of tables and have a local following that fills them regardless of the season.
Read also: Porto Cervo: What to Do in a Village Built in 1962 | Where to Stay on the Costa Smeralda | The Complete Guide to the Costa Smeralda
