Pizzica Tarantina di Mare
Taranto, Puglia
Taranto's raw seafood platter — a presentation of the living harvest from the Mar Piccolo (the inland lagoon of Taranto) including raw oysters, raw sea urchin, raw mussels, raw clams, and raw taranto scallops, served on ice with lemon, dressed with nothing but the sea-water brine they open in. The Mar Piccolo's unique ecology (landlocked warm lagoon fed by freshwater springs called 'citri') produces shellfish of incomparable flavour intensity — less saline than open-sea shellfish, more mineral, and with a specific sweetness from the spring water.