The home of the sweet red onion

If ever you find yourself in Tropea [and you should] order anything with the local red onion on it! You will see them absolutely everywhere around town, Tropea is iconic for them.

Ristorante Tropea Vecchia: Grab yourself a table to watch everyone walking by on this main strip and dig into a pizza that is perfect for those who can’t make up their mind – half the pizza topped with fresh prosciutto, mozzarella and rocket the other, folded in like a calzone filled with ricotta and more prosciutto. Top this with a side of fried potatoes with red peppers and those famous red onions.

Pizzeria Porta Nova: Suggested by our B&B host. Swordfish is very popular in the south of Italy so swordfish pasta was a no brainer. The sauce consisted of lots of swordfish cubes, eggplant and while cherry tomatoes in olive oil, garlic and parsley. This was also served with a giant tube pasta called paccheri. Chauntelle had the same pasta topped with scampi in a creamy tomato sauce. Service was amazing here also!

Vecchio Granaio: voted the number 1 pizza in Tropea! It sure did live up to, and exceeded all expectations. Thick, rich sugo I would have been quite satisfied served just a bowl of that, thin base topped with fresh mozzarella and the thinnest perfectly sliced prosciutto. Not to mention the location of this restaurant is stunning, in a little nook between houses covered in vines and the most wonderful staff who even gave us bags of ice for sun burn! Chaun had an iconic dish of gnocchi with a red onion sauce, super thick and sweet with preserved red onions also.

Beach feasts & aprivito

The best thing about southern Italy is that their quick take away/street food options consist of snack bars filled with an array of gourmet pizza slices and suppli/arancini.

Bags packed for a day at the beach meant stopping past Rusti & Co for some food supplies for the day. This would consist of zucchini and capsicum or red onion pizza slices, traditional arancini filled with bacon, sauce and peas or in honour of my grandmother who loves calamari, I couldn’t not get a squid ink and calamari filled suppli on her birthday to celebrate. It was a little strong seafood tasting but how they got the calamari in the middle to stay so tender is beyond me! This was also our last stop in Tropea while we sat at the local church with the locals before making our way to the train station. Deeelicious!

Aprivito is probably one of the best concepts! Order yourself a drink at the bar and they serve it with a plate of nibbles. Our top two [because we couldn’t not try a few!] were Absolute Bar; Aperols with fried olives, meatballs, salted chips, peanuts, focaccia squares and chilli marinated olives. A salty snack couldn’t go better with this bitter sweet drink and now we understand how the Europeans last to have dinner so late in summer when you can easily get a 6pm snack!

Bar Papillon; the second top place for aprivito. For €5 you have complete access to a buffet of seafood; charred prawns, fried shrimp, crumbed olives, bruschetta, tender fried calamari, prawn cutlets, battered local shrimp all with homemade cocktail sauce. Plenty of fresh lemons everywhere, even in the hand wipes to clean yourself up with after!

The dilemma now is, will people be looking at me strange this summer when I lay my towel on the sand at the beach and pull out a pizza box for lunch?…

THE BEST GELATI EVER!!!

Before we get to the best dessert ever, Tropea is famous for a dessert called tartufo – a ball of ice cream usually with a soft or nut centre and coating on the outer.

The first tartufo trial was chocolate from Ristorante Tropea Vecchia. the top half chocolate, bottom half vanilla all surrounding a ball of chocolate ganache and dusted with cocoa. The second thanks to the recommendation of my friends Grace & Frankie – pistachio! Bottom half pistachio, top half vanilla, surrounding a ball of pistachio cream/ganache, rolled in crushed pistachio and a drizzle of pistachio sauce. Yummm and from Cocktail Bar Tropea while people watching.

Bar da Totonno Gelateria: Stuck in the pouring rain we sheltered under the covers of this bar. Every night we would walk past and they would have a stand out front selling hot fresh pastries you could smell all over town. This called for a €1 espresso and a vanilla cornetto, similar to a croissant. Filled with hot vanilla bean custard, warmed me from the inside out!

Gelateria Mimmo; The discovery of fig [fico] gelato… WOW!!! It was like biting into a fresh cold ripe fig and I am completely in love. I can still remember the taste so clearly, or maybe because I went back and had it for breakfast one morning! Honourable mentions to the Nero chocolate [dark and bitter], Casata Sicilian that was overloaded with candied fruit, Fererro Rocher that tasted exactly like the chocolate and a very strong zabaglione