Ristorante da ö Battj

The beauty of dining in Italy is that the majority of the best trattorias and restaurants, especially those out of the big cities, are still family-owned. Their decades-old recipes are passed down from generation to generation and are often carefully guarded against outsiders. Like in the case of Da Ö Battj, a family-owned restaurant up the hills of Santa Margherita di Ligure, whose Ligurian scampi cooked according to the old family recipe are worth a special trip. (As much as some of the seafood temples in Spain.) Of course, I didn’t have a right to visit the kitchen, but the family patriarch and chef Giovanni Costa has kindly agreed to bring them out for my video.