The Costa Smeralda in northeastern Sardinia is an oligarch’s playground, as famous for mediocre, overpriced food as it is for white sand beaches. Somu stands out in a sea of uselessly contemporary tourist traps. Chef Salvatore Camedda leverages modern techniques to capture the essence of local flavors in dishes like risotto with sweet and sour peppers, amaretto butter, and horseradish, or roasted turbot with spring onions, beer, and bitter greens. Every meal comes with an emerald green sea view. 

Located a short distance from the Alghero airport, Sa Mandra is a working farm owned by a family from the rural Barbagia subregion 75 miles to the southeast. Over the course of more than 30 years, owners Rita Pirisi and her husband, Mario Murrocu, have transformed a dilapidated property into a thriving 100-hectare farm with accommodations. The restaurant, which is open to agriturismo guests and other visitors, serves meals showcasing the produce and meat from Sa Mandra and surrounding farms. The earthy, land-based dishes include handmade maharrones de pungiu — textured gnocchetti with tomato, sausage, and pecorino — and porcetto allo spiedo (also called porceddu), spit-roasted suckling pig.

Sardinia has the richest sweets culture of any region in Italy. Many cookies and desserts are so intricately constructed that they resemble finely carved marble sculptures. The best place to see this in action is at Roberto Murgia’s laboratorio in Alghero. There are year-round items like tilicas de sapa (ornate cookies filled with a paste of spiced wine must) that are ideal for any festive occasion, candelaus (a labor-intensive sweet made with almond paste) suited for weddings and baptisms, and tzipulas (ricotta, potato, and saffron doughnuts) fried for Carnevale.

Supramonte di Baunei is a stretch of mountainous terrain in eastern Sardinia that mainly attracts nature enthusiasts to its rocky plateaus and vertiginous trails that funnel hikers to remote coves along the sea. The area retains a rough and rural character, personified by cuiles — shacks hand-constructed from juniper that serve as shelters for shepherds to nap or hang out — that dot the countryside. The Bertarelli family has transformed a set of these retreats into a restaurant specializing in the region’s meaty classics, serving dinner on a series of terraced patios overlooking livestock stalls. The fixed menu starts with a spread of cheeses and cured meats, roasted goat entrails, and vegetable fritters, followed by pasta like culurgiones (potato and cheese dumplings) with tomato sauce, then suckling pig that spins on a spit for hours until tender. Book well in advance, and be sure to download the restaurant location on your smartphone before turning off the main road; it’s a few kilometers along a rocky path into the woods.

Sardinia is Italy’s main producer of bottarga di muggine, the salted roe of gray mullet, which is cured until it is delicately savory and has the ideal texture for grating and slicing. Sandwiched on a spit of land between the sea and the Tortolì Lagoon, where the mullet are fished, Chiosco di Ponente offers bottarga straight from the source. The beachside stand is run by the Cooperativa Pescatori Tortolì, which produces various kinds of bottarga, including the most prestigious version, made from the roe of hand-caught mullet. The menu changes daily and varies between lunch and dinner, but it usually features bottarga in dishes like spaghetti, as well as local oysters raised in beds in the lagoon. Be sure to check for special events like fish frys and grilled fish night.

Part glamping ground, part aperitivo venue, Sa Mola Experience is set among centuries-old olive trees in the tiny town of Escolca, where the Cadoni family has been making extra-virgin olive oil for four generations. During the pandemic, the youngest generation sought a creative — and outdoor — way to introduce people to the family business, so they launched a nightly aperitivo in the groves. The spread includes local wine served at sunset with olives, cheeses, breads, and cured meats. 

Clocking in at nearly 90,000 square feet, Cagliari’s main mercato is one of the largest in Europe. The ground floor is devoted to meat, cheese, legumes, produce, bread, and other grocery items, while the lower level is completely dedicated to fish so fresh you may get splashed as one tries to wriggle out of its container. While San Benedetto does boast some imports from other areas, like tuna from Carloforte, much of the catch is hyperlocal, like eels from the nearby lagoon and dogfish destined for burrida, the city’s signature starter of pickled fish with a sauce of walnuts and fish liver.

Dario Torabia and Luigi Serra opened this restaurant with the aim of making guests feel like they are at the home of an old friend — albeit a friend who is young, has a large street art collection, and listens to Rancid (who made the song for which the restaurant is named). The food is deeply rooted in the flavors of southern Sardinia but often incorporates ingredients from across the globe. Standout dishes include braised legumes with casu axedu (a brined cheese), black garlic, and miso; and smoked fish with sour cream, beets, dill, and abbamele (an ancient Sardinian honey product). The wine list is filled with fun natural wine from the island and the mainland.

Just off Cagliari’s waterfront, Sabores pours natural wines with tapas-like snacks such as butter and Cantabrian anchovies on toast, with a larger menu at dinnertime that includes dishes like raw red shrimp with peaches, and fregula with tuna, cuttlefish, and octopus ragu. The ingredients are top-notch thanks to the relationships the owners have built with producers across the island, which also supply Sabores’s nearby gourmet food and wine shop, Sapori di Sardegna.

Sa Cardiga e su Schironi’s maritime-themed decor perfectly matches the seafood-rich menu and seaside location by a lagoon near Cagliari. Buzz to gain entrance, then pass the huge display of local catch en route to the wood-clad dining rooms where classics like burrida (pickled dogfish) and cassola de pisci (fish soup) celebrate Cagliari’s thriving fishing industry. In season, order the eponymous dish: eels cooked on a grill (sa cardiga) and served from iron skewers (su schironi). The wine cellar, one of the island’s finest, holds more than 600 labels, including stunning old vintages from Sardinia.

The Loddo family opened La Terrazza near Cagliari in 1975, and it remained a traditional Italian bar until 2019, when Barbara Loddo and her husband, Giuseppe Vizzini, expanded her parents’ business with a bistrot next door. The all-day cafe serves wine, cocktails, and cheese plates, with a younger vibe and a heavy focus on ingredients, many of which are displayed and sold from the shelves around the dining room. Heartier dishes like spaghetti with colatura and bottarga appear at lunch and dinnertime. The wine list features natural and terroir-driven wines from Sardinia, Sicily, and mainland Italy.

Just southeast of the Isola di San Pietro, the island of Sant’Antioco has a few coastal villages connected by asphalt roads, but the island’s interior is mostly undeveloped hills of brush and sparsely inhabited farmland. In the heart of the main village, Achille Pinna’s fine dining menu draws on the island’s land-based specialties, with dishes like suckling pig with braised endive and steak with porcini mushrooms. There’s plenty of fish, too, like amberjack ceviche with white melon and fregula swimming in a seafood broth.