Gallipolli Eats: Trattoria La Puritate

In our tour of Puglia, we made a stop at the island of Gallipolli to have a look-see. It was a beautiful town, very quiet in this off-season. Our driver, who walked the town with our guide and us, mentioned that he couldn’t recognize it for the lack of people!

We faced bracing winds for much of the visit, a sprinkling of rain, but also blue skies over the blue Ionian sea.

Of course, with such a maritime setting, we wanted to have seafood for lunch. I had read about a spot, right across the bridge from the mainland where we entered town, where there was a wharf-like area with seafood restaurants. I’m sure it would be much more busy in the summertime!

There was only one restaurant open. We took a look at their display of seafood, but to be honest the seafood looked quite sad - not fresh at all. I think the seafood in the market of Valencia would be much fresher, or even what one could find in the supermarket in San Diego.

We decided to backtrack to a restaurant we had passed earlier.

Trattoria La Puritate, so named because it’s near a church of the same name. Our guide had told us that this was one of the best restaurants in town.

I think in summertime, we would have needed reservations to get in.

But there was plenty of space for us. The joys of off-season travel!

We said that we would treat our guide and the driver to lunch, and they selected just to share the antipasti course, called “Raw and cooked seafood mix” in the appetizers section in English. We’d never ordered this before, so we added on another order for my parents and me, plus a couple of pasta dishes.

There was a bread basket with the round taralli crackers.

And then the different dishes of the “antipasti” order started to come out!

Raw prawns…

…a carpaccio of fish…

…raw shrimp…

…cooked octopus over potato puree…

…these delicious morsels,

kind of like a fritter of fish, encrusted with sesame seeds.

Also baked mussels…

…another fried platter,

…and fried small cuttlefish.

Wow, we didn’t realize the “antipasti” order came with such a variety of dishes!

Here was our linguini with clams.

And short paccheri with seafood.

The pasta dishes were fine, but the delight of the meal was one course after another of seafood and fish with so many different preparation styles, all delicious.

The meal ended with these pebbles of sugar-coated marzipan, I think it was.

I’m so glad we turned around at the wharf, to come back to Trattoria La Puritate. Not only did we have a great meal, we also learned about the simply-labelled “antipasti” menu item. Had our driver and guide not ordered that for themselves, we would have never learned!