In an ancient village on the Amalfi Coast, one family has made colatura the same slow way since 1950. Now the question is who comes next.
This place, Cetara, is old. Not like Paris old or Edinburgh old. Far older. So old that it served, for the ancient Greeks, as a sort of Here Be Dragons part of the world just on the edge of their maps. The Greeks feared the people who lived there—even as they were trying to colonize them—and processed that fear into some of their greatest stories. Not far from here are the three small islands that Strabo called the Sirenuse, home to the half-woman, half-bird enchantresses who lured sailors to their deaths, until Odysseus outsmarted them.
The siren song remains strong here in Cetara. The village is well hidden from the crowds that choke the rest of the Amalfi Coast, with a little bobbing fishing fleet in the harbor and a pocket beach guarded by a sixteenth-century stone watchtower. Ask chef Pasquale Torrente, and he will gladly tell you about how the village (with the help of some fried fish and a couple bottles of wine) finally soothed a very hungover Anthony Bourdain, who filmed with him there for a 2011 episode of No Reservations. “By the end of the shoot,” says Torrente, “Anthony said he would buy that tower and live there for the rest of his life.”
You can mark Cetara’s age in its most famous product: colatura di alici, the concentrated essence of salted anchovies, splashed on spaghetti or stirred into broth. It’s a medieval descendant of the garum that Romans were making on this spot two thousand years ago. At the Fabbrica Nettuno workshop up on the hill, the process remains unbroken from the Middle Ages: stack anchovies and salt in a wooden barrel, press them, age them, and collect the extract that seeps out from the bottom.
Continue reading
Access this and all our other premium articles by joining our membership program. Plans start at $6.50 per month and include twice-weekly digital features, access to in-person events, and more.
