Spaghetti con le Cozze alla Tarantina

Davanti’s spaghetti carries mussels, grape tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil, garlic and chile pepper. The mussels bring deep marine savor; tomatoes answer with juicy sweetness and acidity; garlic adds warmth; and chile leaves a clean spark behind the olive oil’s roundness. It is a direct, lively sauce in which the pasta and shellfish remain at the center.

“Alla Tarantina” points to Taranto, Puglia’s “city of two seas.” Mussel cultivation there reaches back at least to the Middle Ages. In the sheltered Mar Piccolo, underwater freshwater springs called citri mingle with seawater, helping shape a local mussel culture that is inseparable from the city’s identity. A plate named for Taranto therefore carries more than seafood—it recalls generations of work and cooking along the Ionian shore.