Inspiration

How to Eat Your Way Through Genoa, Italy's Most Underrated City

The ancient port city (and birthplace of pesto) has incredible street food, hidden restaurants, and markets.
Image may contain Plant Food Meal Cutlery Fork Dish and Building
Photographs by Linda Pugliese

Giacomo and I are lost. We are winding through the dark old alleys (called caruggi) of Genoa’s Centro Storico, many only a wingspan wide and forgivingly cool in the summer heat. I’m hungry, having just arrived from New York, as is Giacomo, an Italian winemaker friend who drove from Milan to meet me for dinner. In each shady stone artery a glass window displays Genoese specialties—tiny crisp, fried anchovies, stuffed eggplant, oven-roasted snails, golden pancakes of farinata, torte of chard and herbs, gelati in wildflower hues. But Giacomo, chattering on the phone to the owner of Il Genovese, where we’ve booked, drags me away from these culinary delights.

All forms of Genoese street food are partly why I’m in the Italian Riviera’s diamond in the rough. There is also pesto, born here, and salsa di noci, perhaps just as delicious, of walnuts and fresh cheese. There is focaccia, steeped in delicate Ligurian oil, which I have longed to taste in situ. But I’m interested, too, in studying Genoa’s contradictions, of which there are many. According to Fred Plotkin, author of Italy for the Gourmet Traveler and the cookbook Recipes from Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera, Genoa is Italy’s most underrated city. For one, he says, “It is full of Genoese people.” They are known for their almost rigid straightforwardness—Italians use the word schietto to describe them. “It’s a certain kind of candor,” Plotkin explains. “People from Maine have it too. They’re not rude, but they’re very direct. Other Italians have bella figura and all that. Not in Genoa,” he says. “Notice that all the great works of art in Genoa are inside buildings. That’s part of the reserved Genoese nature.” That paradoxical quality may be visible in native son Christopher Columbus’s travel plans. The late writer Louis Inturrisi cites one of Columbus’s biographers, who asserted: “Only a Ligurian could have conceived of the idea of sailing West to reach East.”

An espresso break at Genova Pasticceria.

Photo by Linda Pugliese

Pressed tight against the sea, as if pinned there by the Alps to the north and the Apennines to the south, Genoa is not a city of fishermen, but home to one of the great maritime empires of the Middle Ages. Its wild mercantilism put Genoa in contact with the world, endowing it with the wealth and architectural and artistic grandeur of a city like Venice, and the grit of a port city like Marseille. Indeed, one sees immediately that Genoa is worn yet elegant—a vintage Balenciaga dress that shows the wear of use.

We finally locate Il Genovese, on Via Galata. In a small, modern, well-lit dining room, renovated since the restaurant’s opening in 1912, Giacomo and I begin with fritto misto, which I expect to be seafood. But other than the portside stands that sell inexpensive food for sailors and dock workers, Genoa’s cuisine is adamantly terrestrial. Giacomo explains that in bygone days, fish in Genoa was considered the food of the poor. This part of the Mediterranean, which brims with lovely little bony sea critters, doesn’t have the great tuna and swordfish of Sicily. Olive trees, however, take naturally to the steep Ligurian coastline. The olive oil, featured in the many fried offerings, is uncharacteristically light and subtle because it is often made of only one olive variety—taggiasca. Instead of little fish and squid, we find our fritto misto comprises various lovely fried things of the land: frisceü, plain fritters, golden fritters of chickpea flour called panissette, latte brusco—an egg-yolk-rich béchamel croquette—and little squares of fried tripe.

Fritti misto, pesto, and beef ravioli at Il Genovese.

Photo by Linda Pugliese

Next is pesto al mortaio. This was invented here and is still made by hand in mortars of Carrara marble. The basil leaves’ own oils emulsify, along with sharp parmigiano, local oil, and pine nuts, into a sauce that is ineluctably creamy. It’s served on trofie—short squiggles of dough that grip the sauce at each cinch—and testaieu, a flattened pancake much like Ethiopian injera, cut into diamonds. Chestnut flour is a tradition born of the absence of any arable farmland for growing wheat. “Look at the topography of Liguria,” Plotkin had instructed me. “It is 184 miles from one end to the other, from Tuscany to the French Riviera, and seldom goes more than 15 to 30 miles inland. It’s hard to grow wheat or corn. Luckily, chestnut flour and chickpea flour are delicious.”

Liguria has only a few meadows for grazing cows and considerably less space for roaming pigs than its neighbor Tuscany, which explains the absence of large amounts of beef and pork in many local dishes. Ravioli also originated here, and in Ligurian dialect, rabiole can mean a thing of trifling value. The theory is that odds and ends of meat were gathered together, perhaps even on trading galleons, and turned into the next meal, like ravioli au tuccu which arrives next.

Roberto Panizza, Il Genovese’s owner who also serves as its reservationist, maître d’, and waiter, emerges from his old kitchen to serve us the most delicious tripe stew I’ve had: light and subdued, cooked in white wine and light broth, instead of tomato, served in a wide bowl with thick slices of waxy yellow potato and tiny black olives. The restaurant, which has been half full for most of our dinner, begins to empty. Panizza, who has remained aloof throughout the meal, delivers us slices of strosciata, a local, lightly sweet, dry, crumbly cake, and two bottles of grappa, and sits down with us. Together, we drink out of small glasses for the better part of an hour. By the end, he has offered me a tour of the city the following day.

Urns with medicinal herbs at Farmacia Sant’anna.

Photo by Linda Pugliese

Henry James called Genoa’s caruggi “the most entangled topographical ravel in the world,” but they are second nature to Panizza, who is mayoral in the number of salutations he issues as he guides me almost frantically though the dark winding lanes, intent on exposing all their wonders in a single morning. There are two main sorts of Genoese street-food shops: sciamadde and friggitorie. Sciamadde specialize in subtly flavored tarts and pancakes, baked in deep, old woodburning ovens on copper pans, each as big as a tractor wheel. These are dark places, centuries old, but they smell wonderful. We stop at the Antica Sciamadda, where choosing among tarts, mottled by the fire’s heat, is almost painful. I order polpettone—which elsewhere means meatloaf but here is a masterpiece of tender chard, fragrant wild marjoram, bread crumbs, and fresh local cheese called prescinsêua. I also order farinata, an alchemical creation of chickpea flour, water, and olive oil. Any visitor to Nice has tasted this as socca, because Nice—or Nizza, as it was called—was a Genoese outpost until 1860. It is better here, and I vow to learn to make it at home.

The friggitorie, just as ancient, are tiny white-tiled galleys where cauldrons of oil bubble over charcoal. In the Sottoripa, which resembles a North African souk, we stop at Antica Friggitoria Carega. Here, we are forced again to choose: among tiny fish, rings of little squid, ruby-red shrimp, baccalà, and other “poor” sea creatures whose names I don’t know, though I go searching for them on a pilgrimage to Genoa’s fish market early one morning. (While at the market, I freeze in delight before wooden crates of silver fish, bags of unrecognizable beings in shells, eels of varying sizes, tiny rose-petal-pink fish, and boxes of spiky critters labeled only zuppa di pesce.) They are delicious fried, scooped every few minutes from bubbling oil by lynx-eyed experts and delivered unsmilingly to customers.

Genoa was probably founded in the third century b.c. as a Roman port. Ruled for 400 years by Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Lombards, and Carolingians—which may also have contributed to its somewhat Frankish manner—Genoa established itself as an independent republic in the 12th century. The next 200 years were the city’s golden age and can be narrated like a fairy tale: There were four great maritime cities, and they were the most powerful cities in all the land: Pisa, Venice, Amalfi, and Genoa. The last, in particular, flourished and became a commercial and naval superpower known for its nautical might and liberal attitude toward moneylending. By the 14th century, Genoa’s merchant and banking families were so wealthy, their palaces so grand, that when the poet Petrarch visited he termed it La Superba (which translates as either “the Proud” or “the Arrogant.”)

Inside the 16th-century Palazzo Doria Tursi museum in the Centro Storico.

Photo by Linda Pugliese

How such a storied place came to be ignored by most tourists is explained by its palimpsest quality. Though its Centro Storico is said to be the largest in Europe, with buildings dating to 1,000 a.d., Genoa was also one of the first cities in Italy to build a skyscraper. It had Italy’s first elevated highway, an ugly thing that reminded me of New York’s dreaded Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. As the second busiest port in Italy, it was incredibly strategic during World War II and as such was terribly bombed. What is left is a hodgepodge of modern and ancient. Add people who seem withdrawn, and a souk-like knot visitors are warned against entering after dark, and you end up with a place that is not obvious, or effortless. But it is compelling. As Wagner famously said, once you have seen Genoa, Paris and London seem boring.

This is on my mind at La Brinca, a deeply Genoese restaurant set high in the hills in the town of Ne, 20 miles from Genoa. It is up harrowing roads that climb inland, into the chestnut and pine forests, toward a plot so steep you might easily miss its parking lot. If you did, you would never taste the almost strengthening mountain dishes that Sergio Circella and his family serve, often cooking them in their 30-year-old woodburning ovens, using herbs gathered from their hills, potatoes dug from nearby rows. You would miss their panella, flavored with local wild fennel leaves, and their whole borage leaves, battered and fried in their entireties. I eat all of these, noting another thing Plotkin had pointed out—that while Venetians integrated the spices they returned with from their trade routes into their cooking, the Genoese treated spices as a commodity to be resold, maintaining the same simple cuisine that relied on fragrant, wild herbs.

Shopping at Genoa’s botteghe storiche—historic shops that opened between the 17th and mid-20th centuries­—is likewise an archaeological dig. Among the rich tumult of untamable alleys, shops—intentionally unchanged—are not only storefronts but workshops. In addition to marble counters, high oak ladders, original shelves bursting with almond candies or lace or silver scissors or soap, each has a candymaker spinning sugar, or a seamstress at a sewing machine, or a silversmith with a tiny soldering iron. Craftspeople do their work; shopkeepers, often from the families that first laid the marble tile they stand on, sell it; and we, happy shoppers, can see it all. Each thing I purchase is at once new and old—entirely of the present and entirely of the past.

Emerging from the maze into almost blinding sun, I find myself on the Via Garibaldi, where grand palazzi line the street—including one worked on by one of the architects of Versailles. It is difficult to tell from their facades whether they are private homes, government offices, museums, shops. Through the bars of gates and cracks in great wooden doors, I glimpse lush courtyards, marble stairways, elaborate chandeliers, and brightly colored frescoes. But only the barest fragments can be seen from the sidewalk. Meandering past one such palazzo, I notice that its wrought iron gate stands open. I am reminded of something else Panizza said, as he rushed to expose his beloved city’s endless shades and contours: “Don’t stop at the facade. Go beyond the facade.” And so, I step inside.

The Genoa Blackbook

Getting ThereYou can’t fly direct to Genoa from the United States, though many major airlines, including British Airways and Delta, can get you there with one connection. Alternatively, Genoa is a two-and-a-half-hour drive or a three-hour train ride from Milan’s Malpensa Airport, which has daily nonstops from New York’s JFK.

How to PlanMost travelers see Genoa as a necessary pit stop where they’ll catch the daily ferries heading to the Ligurian coast’s resort towns like Cinque Terre, La Spezia, or Portofino. Our tip: Tack on two full days here before or after the beach. Know that Genoa isn’t a hotel town, but the Renzo Piano–designed rooms at the waterfront NH Collection Genova Marina near the Porto Antico (from which Columbus set sail for the New World) are your best bet. It’s the closest option to the Centro Storico and Sottoripa, both of which are a ten-minute walk away (plus, you’ll be able to watch the fishermen glide in and out while sipping your morning espresso).

Decoding the Botteghe StoricheGenoa’s tangle of historic shops is notoriously mazelike. Pick up a copy of Botteghe Storiche, from indie bookshop L’Amico Ritrovato near Palazzo Ducale. Their English-Italian guide is printed by the organization dedicated to preserving the stores and is filled with easy-to-follow itineraries (there’s also a digital version). Or seek out our favorites: At the 367-year-old Farmacia Sant’Anna, apothecary Friar Ezio will happily mix a plant-based Galenic cure from his selection of herbs; Macelleria Nico is worth a visit for its sculptures of animals made of Carrara marble; and the 1780 Pietro Romanengo fu Stefano sells candied fruits and violets, fondants, and other sweets loved by the Genoese oligarchs of the 19th century.

What You’ll Do Besides EatingHead to the medieval Cathedral of San Lorenzo in the city center for its 14th-century Gothic facade and ceiling frescoes crafted by local maestro Lazzaro Tavarone. You’ll get nice views of the city if you walk up to the Campo Pisano, a large piazza named after the 9,000 prisoners from Pisa who were jailed nearby in 1284 and home to one of the town’s more unusual examples of risseu, a type of pebblestone mosaic native to Genoa. And the 14th-century Palazzo Ducale, the old Doge’s residence, is now a cultural space with rotating shows from van Gogh canvases to Cartier-Bresson photography.

When It’s Time for an Afternoon DrinkOur favorite wine bar is Marescotti di Cavo, a pastry-and-champagne spot close to the Porto Antico. Find a table next to the crystal windows and order light-as-air amaretto cookies and a flute of Bellavista Spumante.

Where Else You’ll Have DinnerAs well as Il Genovese, we head to Vico Palla and Sa’ Pesta in the center for excellent fritto and pesto.

Bring Something BackWe love the locally made striped sailors’ shirts from 100-year-old Lucarda. Or, if you just want to perfect your pesto back home, get a bottle of Santagata olive oil from EVO.