We escaped Sorrento early enough for a leisurely drive through Basilicata and Calabria along the shin of the Italian boot to Scilla and Reggio de Calabria. It was a cloudy day with rain off and on, hard to get good photos of the gorgeous, rugged scenery. I had originally planned to drive along the coast, but I read that it is marred by lots of tacky new-construction hotels and condos for summering Italians, so we opted to stay on the highway and spend the time in Scilla. It was a good choice.
Scilla (pronounced SHILL-a) is an ancient fishing village dominated by the great castle-crowned promontory of Scylla, one half of the twin terrors faced by brave Ulysses as he passed through the Strait of Messina: Scylla and Charybdis. These days it is economically dominated by the swordfish fishery. Chianalea, the fishing port at the base of the hill, is where the local fishermen set out in custom-made boats for swordfish and tuna (the great sea-predators) at the mouth of the Strait of Messina and return with impeccably fresh fish each day!
Once upon a time, coming home from Rhode Island along Route 6, as we passed through Mattapoisett, we saw a peculiar sign. Out in front of Turk's was a sign for 'Harpooned Swordfish". American swordfishers, as in The Perfect Storm, catch bunches of swordfish on long lines, hauling the lines in when there's enough drag on them. That means that the first fish caught might be on the line for some time, chewed on by sharks and whatever else happens along, with a resulting spongey texture to the meat. Awesome!
That's why these dayboat swordish are so wonderful, and Scilla is too far from Rome for this to be validated on those menus. So your Foodie Pilgrim is here to spread the news about plentiful line-caught day-boat swordfish. It''s the real deal.
And in Scilla, they cook it in a few locavore ways... So I had to sample that. (All this locavore fine-dining reporting is grueling work, I'll have you know.) At Il Casato in Chianalea, where the fish is freshest, we had swordfish en papillote and "in a Mediterranean style" which was covered with crushed almonds and pistachios. I also enjoyed Spaghetti with Sea Urchin, but Lorna and Melissa chose to pass on that one.
It's important to note here that Scilla is very far removed from the usual tourist routes. You cannot count on people speaking English; even a simple transaction like buying diesel for Giulia was tricky. Parking the car required some luck, and the ladies (sisters?) from whom we procured our room were lovely, but understood nothing we said without the help of their nephew.
On the other hand, they had fresh, home-made almond milk in the fridge, which they served to us as we waited for the nephew to join the phone call. What an amazing sense of shared humanity, these ladies with whom conversation was extremely limited, transcending that difficulty with foodie goodness!
Scilla is a small town, and the Chianalea waterfront is smaller still. We had reservations to sleep at Il Porticciolo for $114 for the three of us, and that was a bargain considering the free parking and free almond milk. Certainly the view was worth it!
Scilla is also very close to the ferry from Villa San Giovanni to Messina, Sicily, just 15 minutes away. That meant that we could get an early start the next day on the exotic Sicilian leg of our adventure without dealing with the traffic of the much larger Reggio Calabria.