When I tell you to turn your back on the sea and head up, I'm usually thinking of the valleys and their oil mills. But there's a place, in Dolcedo, where you don't even have to choose between land and sea: they put them on the same plate. It's called Casa della Rocca, and to get there you head up the Prino valley for about twenty minutes, right into one of the prettiest villages in these hills.
Dolcedo is the village of mills and oil. You understand it the moment you arrive: the stream water that turned the millstones for centuries, the famous medieval bridge, the stone houses pressed up against one another. It's one of those places you reach from Imperia in a few kilometres but that seems to belong to another time. If the oil of the western Riviera intrigues you, you're in the right spot up here: I've already told you about it in the post on the oil of Dolcedo, at Benza.
An early-twentieth-century mill
The first thing that gets you, here, is the place itself.
Casa della Rocca is inside an old early-1900s oil mill, and that isn't a brochure turn of phrase: the millstone and the oil press are still there, in their place. You sit down under the stone vaults, with the bare rock lit up and the gear of the mill all around, and you understand straight away that you're in a place that worked the olive long before it served food. The atmosphere is rustic and homely, warm, the kind that makes you feel you're at someone's house rather than in a restaurant. Tina and Peter Dosor run it, and their old motto says it all: "To the pleasure of good food."
Land and sea on the same plate
And then there's what they bring to your plate, which is the reason this place ended up in the Michelin Guide's selection.
Here the cooking is Ligurian through and through, but with a clear idea: to hold land and sea together, the two souls of this province that too often look at each other from a distance. Sometimes you even find them on the same plate, the fish and the hill talking to one another. There's the hand of the territory, there are a few creative touches, there's even the odd Piedmontese accent that, in these border valleys, doesn't feel out of place at all. And there's the season, always: what arrives depends on what's outside at that moment, not on a menu written once and for all. Among the things they do well here is the fish soup, one of those that make you understand why the sea, in Dolcedo, is never quite forgotten. And if you go with someone who doesn't eat meat, the vegetarian options are there and looked after like everything else.
One clarification, because I care about being honest: it isn't a Michelin star. It's a mention — the Guide keeps it in its selection with a "good cooking" verdict — and that's already a fine recognition for a village mill up the valley.
A fish soup at Casa della Rocca: the sea, reaching all the way up here, in the Dolcedo hinterland.
How to go
A few practical tips, from someone who cares about not sending you off on the wrong foot.
Dolcedo is about fifteen to twenty minutes from Imperia: take the car, head up the valley, and you're there. You'll find it on Via Ripalta, right in the village, after crossing the bridge over the stream. Casa della Rocca opens in the evening and is closed on Tuesdays, so you always make a phone call before setting off, and while you're at it you book: it's a small, intimate place, not one of those barns where there's always a free table. On summer evenings there's the terrace outside, and that's where I'd suggest you ask to sit: eating Ligurian food in the open air, with the valley breeze, is worth the trip on its own.
The terrace of Casa della Rocca for summer evenings, with the green of the Dolcedo hills all around.
Casa della Rocca is one of the stops I'd suggest when you feel like eating in the hinterland without giving up the sea: in where to eat off the land I've lined up several of them, from the town to the oil mill, for when the urge for the valley really takes hold. This one, though, is the one that reconciles them both — land and sea, mill and kitchen, hill and coast — in one go.
Where to find it
- A Ligurian restaurant in Dolcedo, in the Imperia hinterland (~15-20 min from the coast), inside an early-twentieth-century mill with the millstone and the oil press still there and the dining room under stone vaults. Local cooking that brings land and sea together — sometimes on the same plate — with creative touches, a few Piedmontese accents and strong seasonality; the fish soup is among the specialities. Vegetarian options. Listed in the Michelin Guide. Open in the evening, closed on Tuesdays: best to book. Tel +39 0183 682648.Via Ripalta 3, Dolcedo (Imperia)