Provincia di Chieti

As one travels along the coast near Abruzzi, one sees numerous little shacks standing on hundreds of slender sticks driven into the beach. Wooden booms holding fishnets extend out over the surf. This type of fishing hut is known as a trabucco. Most of them were built hundreds of years ago, and have simply been patched up with chewing gum and bailing wire ever since. We stopped at Trabocco Punta Cavalluccio, now converted into a restaurant, for a seafood feast of a lifetime. I was about to say that we had an eight-course meal, but it would be more accurate to say that we had eight consecutive meals. We started eating at 7:00 pm and did not finish until midnight. Each course was more food than I usually eat at one sitting, and it was all delicious. Waiters brought fried sardines, squid, octopus, sea snails, pasta-seafood combinations, and a dozen other delights, along with enough local wine to float a fishing boat. Before the meal was half over I was painfully full. But the food kept on coming.

An interesting twist to the meal involved a heavy storm out at sea. A huge surf constantly shook our sea-hut, giving us some concern that any moment the whole toothpick structure would collapse. As Jerry Lee Lewis once sang it there was a “whole lot of shaking going on,” and our twenty-eight eyes all enlarged together every time a huge roller threatened to smash the sticks and allow the Adriatic surf to swallow us, our shack and every last dinner plate.

I had to return my last four heavily loaded plates practically untouched. Now that the meal is over I feel as though I may not have to eat again for at least a month.Read more