Restaurants in the province of Oristano

Oristano is the province of lagoons: Cabras, the Sinis, the mouth of the Tirso. The best bottarga in Italy comes from here, and a lagoon-fish cooking unlike that of the open sea.

What you eat here

• Mullet bottarga from Cabras — salted, dried roe, amber-coloured. Grated, or sliced thin with oil.
• Merca — boiled mullet wrapped in lagoon grass, which preserves and perfumes it.
• Fregula with clams or with saffron, which Sardinia grows.
• Zafferano di Sardegna DOP — the zone is just south, but it is used everywhere here.
• Pane carasau, casizolu (a pear-shaped cheese) and malloreddus.

The wine

Vernaccia di Oristano DOC is an oxidative wine unique in Italy, aged under flor in part-filled barrels: drink it like a Spanish fino, with bottarga. Then Vermentino and Cannonau.

Opening hours change. The ones on the listings come from public sources and may be out of date. Where a restaurant confirms tables with us, the availability you see is the real one.