Seadas is a signature dish of Italy; we have verified places to eat it in Alghero and Cagliari. A large semolina pastry filled with fresh acidic sheep's cheese and lemon zest, fried until it blisters and served under warm honey.

Seadas · Alghero

A large semolina pastry filled with fresh acidic sheep's cheese and lemon zest, fried until it blisters and served under warm honey. Sardinia's national dessert, savoury at its core.

Seadas began as a shepherd's dish rather than a restaurant one, built from the two things a pastoral household always had, semolina and young unaged sheep cheese, and originally eaten as a main course rather than a sweet. The name traces back to seu, the Sardinian word for the animal fat once worked into the dough, and the pastry is stretched thin and cut with a fluted wheel. The honey is usually corbezzolo, the bitter arbutus honey of the island's maquis, which pulls against the sourness of the cheese. In Alghero it closes almost every trattoria meal and is the one dessert visitors are told to order.

Where to eat in Alghero:

Where to eat Seadas in Alghero: the editor picks

Seadas · Cagliari

A large fried pastry parcel filled with fresh, slightly sour sheep cheese and lemon zest, poured over with bitter honey while still hot. Sardinia's cheese course and dessert in the same plate.

Seadas, also written sebadas, were originally a shepherd's dish from the interior rather than a sweet: fresh acidic sheep cheese, a few days old, sealed inside a semolina and lard pastry and fried. The sweetness came later, in the form of honey poured over the top at the table, traditionally corbezzolo honey from the strawberry tree, which is bitter and expensive and the only version Sardinians consider correct. In Cagliari the pastry closes almost every traditional meal, and the test of a good one is that the cheese pulls into strings when it is cut and the pastry stays crisp under the honey.

Where to eat in Cagliari:

Where to eat Seadas in Cagliari: the editor picks

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