Trofie al Pesto at Ristorante Luca
Rapallo sits squarely in the heartland of Ligurian cuisine, and nowhere is that more deliciously apparent than at Ristorante Luca on Via Langano, where the kitchen makes its trofie pasta by hand each morning and pounds pesto in a marble mortar with Genovese DOP basil, Ligurian olive oil and aged Parmigiano. This is the real thing.
What to order and why
Start with a plate of farinata — the thick, golden chickpea pancake baked in a wood-fired copper pan — before moving to trofie al pesto, the dish that defines this stretch of coast. The handmade trofie, little twisted pasta ropes, cling to the sauce in a way that dried pasta simply cannot replicate.
If the kitchen has it, order the second course of branzino al forno con olive taggiasche (sea bass roasted with Taggiasca olives and capers). The Taggiasca olive, grown in western Liguria, is small, buttery and mild, and it perfumes the fish without overpowering it.
The Ligurian wine to drink with it
Ask for a carafe of Pigato, the local white grape variety grown in the hills behind the coast. It has a faint bitter almond finish and a mineral salinity that cuts through the richness of pesto beautifully. It's rarely exported, so drinking it here feels like a privilege.
Finish with a small glass of limoncino — the Ligurian answer to limoncello, made with the fragrant lemons grown on terraced hillsides — and a slice of pandolce Genovese, the dense, lightly spiced fruit cake that Ligurian grandmothers still bake for every occasion.
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