What to eat in Corsica

Corsican cuisine has a distinctly Mediterranean character and is strongly linked to the flavours of the land. It is at its best in the cold season with cured meats, game, soups and stews.

Unfortunately, the great influx of tourists in the summer has led to a general mediocrity in restaurant kitchens, which offer very expensive tourist menus of poor quality.

To savour authentic local cuisine, one has to go and find unspoilt places where originality has not yet been sold out in the name of profit.

Typical Corsican dishes

• Charcuterie: Corsican charcuterie is famous throughout Europe thanks to the tender meat of wild pigs that feed on local acorns and chestnuts. The most delicious are prisutto, a ham dried for 18 months, figatellu, a liver sausage in wine, lonzu, a pork fillet preserved whole under a layer of fat, and salamu di Quenza, a salami left to mature at altitude.
• Brocciu is a fresh cheese made according to an old traditional recipe that is used as a base for various dishes such as soups, omelettes, lasagne and stuffed vegetables.
• Chestnut is also one of the ingredients in Corsican cuisine, especially in stews accompanied by polenta and in soups, so substantial that they replace an entire meal because they also contain meat, pork and sausage.
• If you visit the coast, you will be able to taste excellent grilled fish and seafood dishes such as urchins, moray eels, sardines stuffed with brocciu and the famous bouillarbasse, a rich fish soup.
• Desserts include fiadone, a flan made with brocciu, and canistrelli with almonds, walnuts, lemon or aniseed.