Spaghetti tossed off the heat with raw sea urchin roe, garlic, oil and a little pasta water so the coral melts into a sauce rather than cooking into a paste. Alguerès calls the urchin bogamarì.
Where to eat it: 2 restaurants across 1 city.
Sea urchin has been eaten on the Alghero quays for as long as anyone has fished them, split with a knife and scooped out with bread while still dripping. The pasta version is a restaurant refinement of that habit, and the town still runs a spring rassegna named for the urchin at the port fish market. Pressure on the stock changed the picture. The Sardinian regional government now fixes the harvest window by decree each year, reserving it to licensed professional fishermen, closing the season in spring and capping the weekly take, so the dish is genuinely seasonal and disappears from menus for months at a time.
Common allergens: Gluten, Molluscs
Tip from the editors. Never let the roe boil. Above about 60C it turns grainy and loses the iodine note that makes the dish.
Two kilometres from the Alghero old town, Rafel pairs a covered cocktail veranda with a seafood kitchen and beach service with umbrellas after lunch.
Order: Spaghetti ai ricci when the sea urchin season is open, lobster alla catalana when it is not.
The Alghero port fish market on the Banchina Rafael Catardi is where restaurant kitchens buy the morning's landings before the town wakes. TableJourney pick.
Why locals love it: Alghero fishermen sell their own landings on the quay, and the market is finished by mid-morning.
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