The last day of May was a hot, sunny Friday. Our plan was to visit the famous Gallipoli fishermen's market and then drive along the Ionian Sea to lunch in the port city of Taranto, then we would leave Puglia and pass through the southern end of Basilicata before finishing the drive in Calabria. We would drive through Sibari, Torre Melissa (so Melissa could grab a selfie), Crotone, and south to Rocella Jonica, near Reggio Calabria at the toe of the Italian boot. This whole area had been settled in pre-Roman times as part of Magna Grecia, the sprawling network of Greek city-states, and some of the Greek names survive, with Italian spelling in the Roman alphabet.
In the morning I got up early and returned to Scoglio delle Sirene for an espresso and to catch up on my notes. The owner was very friendly and he made me feel at home while he got things set up for the day.
After an hour or so, Lorna and Melissa joined me. We had a quick breakfast and then Melissa went back to our rooms to get the luggage downstairs while Lorna and I walked through the old city back to the parking lot to get the car, passing the busy fishermen's market at the start of the parking lot. There I made a great discovery! There on a bed of ice were three representatives of a new (to me) type of lobster, called the Cicala di Mare (chee-KA-la di MA-ray). It was about the ugliest critter I'd ever seen but I had to learn all about it and then see if I could find one for dinner in our remaining week in Italy. That's the beast in the top photo, and again here alongside some of the other offerings at that splendid market. Alas! I had hours of driving in the hot sunny day and no way to cook the thing even if I could keep it fresh, so I made a point to look for it somewhere else.
It was a two-hour drive up to Taranto, where we had lunch at Al Faro, looking out at the two enclosed bays that Taranto is known for. They are brackish, with the one nearer to the sea saltier than the other, and both used for raising mussels of surpassing excellence. The lines in the water in this photo are the floats below which the mussels are farmed. We had: Impepato di Cozze (mussels with black pepper), fresh taralle, Puglian orecchiette with a tomato cream sauce, tagliatelle with local red shrimp and cherry tomatoes, chard with chili pepper, sea bream with potatoes, and Lorna and Melissa shared two desserts: pineapple cake and yellow cake with whipped cream.
I was a little disappointed not to see on the menu the Cozze Tarantine. This recipe I got from an old cookbook and I wanted to try it in its hometown so I could know if I'd been making it correctly. As we were winding down our ample lunch, I saw our server going to a table of regulars with a dish of mussels that did not look like anything that I had seen on the menu, so I asked him what it was. It was the Cozze Tarantine! I explained my quest, and before I could say anything more, he brought me this dish and a local seafood risotto with clams, mussels, and calamari, of which he was very proud. I already had the check, so he gave these gratis!
A little further down the road at a gas station I had a Pasticciotto because it's another Puglian specialty that I had not yet tried. Of course I wasn't hungry after that lunch and I thought of saving it, but it was so fresh and light that I ordered an espresso and enjoyed it on the spot. Pasticciotti are small pastries about the size of the palm of your hand, usually filled with vanilla or chocolate pastry cream but sometimes with whatever the baker imagined, like jams or nut filings. Sometimes they are dusted with powdered sugar, but often they are not. Between the lunch with its freebie add-ons at the end and then this filled pastry it was a long time before I was hungry again.
The afternoon drive took us through two famous cities of Magna Grecia, once-elegant Sibari and sensible Crotone, home of Pythagoras. There's not a lot to see of either of them today. Sibari, founded 720 BC, was a very wealthy city on the coast with ample fresh water and a nice harbor. The Sybarites were known for luxury, culture, hedonism, and partying. Today it looks like any other city in southern Italy.
The people that founded Sibari also founded Crotone 10 years later. Crotone was known for its physicians and for its athletes, who were standouts in the Olympic games. Crotone's most famous son is Pythagoras, the great mathematician who also laid the groundwork for the development of harmony, chords, and stringed and wind instruments. His followers were intellectual, rational, and efficient. In 510 BC, war erupted: During a period of bad government, Sibari attacked Crotone. This was an error in judgement; it was destroyed by Crotone.
Our late friend Richmond used to say that you can't get a bad meal in Italy. It took four trips, but we finally proved him wrong. The dinner in Trieste was bad, but we had a dinner in Rocella-Jonica that was both bad and bizarre. We had driven a long time and getting the "hotel" set up took a while, so by the time we went looking for dinner, options were few. We ended up at a picnic table in a park surrounded by pizza joints and a few similar establishments. From the Bar Roma we got assorted mediocre pizzas, arancini, and calzones. It was all inexpensive so if we didn't care for something we got something else. It was a trial-and-error dinner dominated by the latter category. The winner was a Pizza con Wurzel e Patate Fritte, a pizza with hot dogs and french fries! Of course the vegetarians wouldn't eat it but I couldn't get that gastronomic marvel pass without documenting three American classics on one plate prepared Italian-style in far-off Calabria!
We slept at the B&B Amphisya in Vico Martiri, 38, Rocella Jonica 89047. There was trouble at first with wrong address from Booking.com, and then they had two rooms with one bed each when we wanted three beds. Valentina, who spoke no English, was nonetheless patient and dedicated to our success. In the end we got a third room for free, and it had two beds anyway so we had three rooms and four beds! But it's a lovely place and I would return as long as I have better dinner plans ;-)