Spiny lobster boiled, split and served cold under raw tomato and sweet onion dressed with oil and lemon. No cream, no sauce, no heat. The dish Alghero is known for outside Sardinia.

Catalan settlers arrived in Alghero after Pere IV of Aragon took the town in 1354, and the cold lobster salad came with them. The Sardinian version dropped almost everything, keeping raw tomato, sweet onion, olive oil, lemon and the aragosta itself, the spiny lobster of the western Sardinian coast rather than the clawed northern kind. It is priced by weight and usually chosen from a tank, and it is the plate that most clearly marks Alghero as a Catalan town rather than an Italian one. Restaurants on the bastions serve it as a main course for two, dressed at the table.

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