One of my favorite things about Italians is how relentlessly they talk about food. As they’re scooping up another helping of their rigatoni with goose sauce at lunch, they’re discussing dinner. These are my people. So it should come as no surprise that when Italians talk about the sea, yes, sure, they nod about how much they need the sun and waves, but their voices grow serious when they discuss the desire to “mangia pesce.”

It’s a phrase we hear often in Spello’s summertime, as bars become stuffy and sweltering, and eyes turn to the road that leads to the Le Marche. “Mangia pesce”.

Mangia pesce.

Two words that capture the wild and free feeling of stretching on your lettino under the giant umbrella while gazing out at the rustling azure water before strolling to the restaurant propped against the side of a cliff, to kick sand off your feet and order a fruity white wine with whatever seafood sounds appealing.

Mangia pesce.

What I didn’t know is that mangia pesce is not just an escape, it is a lifestyle. I didn’t know it, that is, until we arrived in Gallipoli.

Gallipoli is a tiny spur jutting out into the Ionian sea. An island of sorts, it’s connected to the new town of Gallipoli by about 100 meters of asphalt. The arrival is unceremonious, the road merely dead ends in the harbor parking lot. A few minutes of scrambling to figure out the parking payment situation, and it’s time to hoist the luggage and enter another era. An era when mangia-ing pesce defined one’s day.

Harbors stretch out on either side of Gallipoli, filled with fishing boats and lined with piers heaped with faded nets. Black cats slink about, looking for their own version of mangia pesce which involves less olive oil and more innards.

Gallipoli itself is a tumble of alleys, wending between whitewashed houses, sunset-hued buildings, and tucked away piazzas lined in Lecce-yellow tufo. The church bells clang, heavy with sea air, not only on the hour, but also at random times with a spritely tune seemingly celebrating a good crab pasta.

Homes are oriented differently in Gallipoli than our usual Umbrian standard. Rather than having women leaning out of windows above the clotheslines, in Gallipoli, the doors are split in half, perfect for throwing open the top and leaning over the half-height door (and perfect for peering in, if one should be so bold, and, as they say, ill-mannered, ahem. Moi.) Pillows appear here and there to rest elbows for another round of people-watching. Which means as you walk the streets, heads turn at the level of your elbow. And people drag plastic chairs to gather in front of somebody’s door, so it kind of looks like one person is leaning out of a prop boat, while others cluster around.

Lights spangle across alleys, and front churches. Arrow-heads of light even jut out from buildings, like the edge of diamonds. They add a whimsical nod during the day that becomes a gasp-worthy beauty at night. Particularly with children playing soccer in front of the churches, their faces lit with the colorful lights as they pause to call to passing neighbors.

And those churches. One particular, I fell in love with, and I’m typically a ho-hum church appreciator. Just a block or two from the sea, walking in felt like ducking into hug. Small, and snug, the ancient tiled floor spoke of a humble kind of grandness, echoed in the velvet curtain and the niches filled with painted statuary. I could imagine, in that church, townspeople from time immemorial, waking up to those merry bells before shaking the salt off dress pants to gather in the handful of pews, surrounded by neighbors, listening to the priest intone with all good seriousness. Afterwards, parishioners no doubt gathered to discuss the weather, a constant source of drama when you live on the water.

My favorite street in Gallipoli fits with my image of that church. It’s tucked on the side, this street, and though there weren’t all that many tourists in Gallipoli, thanks to COVID and the off-season, there were none at all here. Instead, we saw a woman stop at the half-doors to chat with an elderly woman in a print polyester halter dress (the style for women of a certain age in Gallipoli), leaning on a white lace pillow. We saw someone on a motorcycle pause to chat with two people stopped in the street. We saw grandmothers praise children in unwieldy backpacks. At night, the street saw a different kind of passeggiata, as men filed into a sports bar, people gathered outside the half door of a woman in an apron, pushing her hair off her forehead with her wrist, more men loitered outside the barber shop, and at the end of the road, old fishermen gathered around folding tables with tumblers of wine and scopa cards spread in front of them. Guessing they were fishermen is a fair assumption in Gallipoli, but also, a plaque outside the door declared this to be a social club for retired fishermen.

Tiled floor of a church in Gallipoli, Puglia, italy

Gallipoli is small, you can walk the perimeter with the sea on one side and the tumble of brightly painted and faded buildings on the other, in about a half hour. So for every passeggiata, I made sure to walk this street. Especially before lunch, when it smelled terrific. Why? Well, everyone was mangia-ing pesce,-ing weren’t they?

In fact, I cooked pesce myself twice. Once we went to the fish market, which is mostly a group of fishermen with Styrofoam boxes of their finds spread in front of them, gathered in the harbor. I bought a kilo of mussels for €5,00. Following other shoppers, I asked for a bit of parsley. Parsley can be hard to find in Italy, unless you are in a big grocery store. It’s the kind of thing you get free, but you have to ask for it. The guy grumbled a bit, he may have been running low, or maybe he was just crusty. He certainly seemed crusty. His mussels, on the other hand…fantastic.

Men selling fish in Gallipoli, Puglia, italy

I cooked them in olive oil, garlic, pepper flakes, and a bit of wine until they opened, and then removed them to a bowl while I cooked down their broth until it hit sauce level, when I tossed it with parsley (yeah, I got that) and linguini. Keith kept going outside just to come back inside and cheer at the smell. Partly because it just smelled wonderful and partly because he felt so proud that our household was contributing to the excellent smells of Gallipoli.

Another day, we went to a fish shop in the center of Gallipoli. I asked for shrimp, but the fishmongers said the shrimp boat didn’t come in until the afternoon. Instead, I got clams. Clams of such surpassing beauty I sent up a fevered thank you to the shrimp for being an afternoon commodity. Besides being the most beautiful clams I’d ever seen, clams are just much tidier to cook than shrimp. And when you’re in an Airbnb, with limited supplies, that matters. Which is why I had to sadly refuse the eager fishermen waving their silvery fish at me. I know from past experience (anyone remember the fish scaling nightmare in Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center?) that in Italy, fish come whole—guts and scales and everything. I didn’t even know if I had a pepper grinder in my Airbnb, let alone a knife sharp enough to neatly slice a fish belly.

I steamed the clams in a lightly cooked and well spiced tomato sauce and tossed them with orecchiette purchased fresh from the shop. As I cooked, I pushed the hair off my forehead with my wrist and stared at the clams opening with what I like to pretend was a practiced eye, connecting with people cooking seafood for their families, all over the island.

Not only did I make fish, but, as you can imagine, we strolled to plenty of mangia pesce opportunities. Since this was my one demand as we left Torre Chianca, I soaked up the joy that comes from spending a day in a beautiful beach, to come home, clean up, and then stroll arm-in-arm to a restaurant to mangia pesce. Highlights were linguini and clams, tagliolini with the local crab sauce, shrimp roasted in salt and then tossed in butter, orecchiette with little shrimp and cubes of swordfish, and (hold onto your cappelli, this one is a doozy): tuna tartare, served atop burrata, layered on top of cubes of frisse (a kind of bread in Puglia that looks like half a bagel, usually topped with tomato like bruschetta) with a sprinkling of chocolate shavings. It oddly worked. Of course, the real highlights were all the antipasti della casa (see: my post on the importance of always ordering the antipasti della casa), which included a sampling of all kinds of fish and shellfish, including the Pugliese standard of raw varieties.

I’d heard that raw seafood was popular in Puglia, in a way it can only be when seafood is so achingly fresh, it requires no ornamentation. And I enjoyed the fish carpaccios we tried. Still, nothing prepared me for the sight of a woman swimming along the rocks that line the edge of Purita beach with a knife in her hand, her eyes intent as she slowly passed from rock to rock. Periodically she stopped and went to work with her knife. A few deft motions, and she popped something in her mouth. We looked up at each other with wide eyes. This was not your ordinary mangia pesce. Can you imagine? Feeling a little peckish around midday and picking out the less damp of your swimsuits to head to the Ionian sea, your knife at your side, and your mouth already watering for the freshest lunch imaginable.

“She doesn’t even have lemon,” Gabe breathed.

That was on our first day and should have prepared us for the fact that mangia pesce was not just an excursion here, it’s a way of life. Once we organized enough to go to the beach ourselves, it became clear what it would be like to live in a sea-town like Gallipoli. Yes, we’d gotten some sense from peeking into open half-doors and seeing people laying out plates for dinner or taking a nap or cutting tomatoes. We’d noted how a town with few allowed cars means people wander and gather and play in a way that is reminiscent of years gone by. We’d not just watched, but participated in buying produce from the guy driving around town in an Ape, calling down the streets about his beautiful peaches. We’d ducked into churches glowing with a patina of sea air.

But not until we got to the water, did the soul of Gallipoli come to life. We set up with our towels and our cooler stocked with chips and cookies and those peaches from the Ape fruit vendor, along with drinks like Estate tea and Chinotto. Well, we didn’t set up as much as throw down, our toes too eager to touch the surface of water that looked like Venetian glass—clear and jewel-like. The water surrounded me as I slipped beneath the surface. No waves to speak of, just gentle crystalline water gliding around my body like cool silk as I floated, blinking at the dark blue sky and the tops of the colorful buildings embracing the beach. It’s disarming, this feeling that you could literally float for hours, without getting splashed by waves or interrupted by boats or knocked over by people.

Keith and Gabe watch a guy fish, no rod, just line.

Over time at the beach, both in the water and watching the action from the sand, we began to notice something else. We’re used to beaches being places of transition. We, and just about everyone else, just claiming a bit of sand for an afternoon, or maybe a week at most. But this beach, this town beach isn’t just in a town, it’s of the town. We watched young and old people alike setting up their chairs and their bedraggled umbrellas, calling out to the friends already lined up down the sand. We watched a little girl and her mother greet their friends, and then greet them again the next day and the day after that. We watched old men, tanned until their skin glowed maroon, enter the water with a bit of line and a bag of bread, or sometimes just the bread. They’d catch fish with the line or their bare hands, one guy would show the fish to the children clustered around, clearly familiar with his game (he offered Gabe a pink shell, which he treasures). The guy with the line though wasn’t there for amusement, he was there for lunch. Within a few moments of sending out his yard of line, he pulled it back in and pulled a fish off the cord. My mouth dropped open as I watched him put the fish in his mouth and bite down to kill it, before putting the fish in his…pocket? I never did figure out where he put it, after all he was wearing a speedo. All I know is he returned to his chair with a bundle of little fish, ready for cooking. Or eating raw, who can say?

Gabe heading back into the sea in Gallipoli, Puglia, Italy

Watching all this fish drama inspired Gabe, who started coming to the beach with goggles and a snorkel and dried out bread and bags transformed into “nets” (no speedo, though). He looked up from his first Gallipoli style foray into the water, sputtering, “Fish! Fish!”

Yes, Gabe, we know there are fish, we saw the guy…

“No! The water, it’s loaded with fish.”

We took turns tossing bread in the water and then using the goggles to watch what seemed like zillions of silvery fish scramble over and under the dissolving bread. How had we not noticed? They were there the whole time.

They must have melded with the reflection of the waves, as much a part of the water as the fishermen are with the town.

None of Gabe’s ways of catching fish worked (I’ll take this moment to brag that I did catch a fish with my bare hands, but the slick and wriggling feel of it was so surprising, I yelped and flung it away), so he abandoned his makeshift equipment and struck out to the rocks with just the goggles and snorkel. No current and no waves and no motor boats and a sea that comes up to your waist even way out, means I could let him explore the water around the rocks while I soaked in the sun’s lingering rays.

Soon though, he ran up, blocking those rays. He could barely get the words out, “Octopus, I saw an octopus. I saw it change colors!”

Siena tossed aside her painting beside the repurposed granita cup she’d filled with fresh water and buried in the sand to clean her brushes. Snatching up the other snorkel and goggles she raced beside Gabe into the water. The octopus had gone, but they reported seeing mussels and clams and anemones and sea urchins and lots of brilliant fish.

That little beach, just a few minute walk from our house, became our haunt. We’d planned on using Gallipoli as a base to travel to “the Maldives of Puglia” and other charming coastal cities, but none of us could bear the thought of leaving, when Gallipoli was right here. Lifting an eyebrow and suggesting we stay awhile.

And so we did, warming ourselves on the sand, strolling back into the water, watching the children play and the fishermen reunite daily with the fisher-people they’d once been, and watching young men wander in the water, their cellphones up to their ear. We watched the sun set over the water, turning the sky apricot and plum. We watched women of all different sizes and ages stand together in the water. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, other than the familiar words—

“Mangia pesce.”