Where to eat on land, from the osteria to the hills

There's a precise day, on every seaside holiday, when fish becomes too much. You notice it at lunch: in front of you is yet another plate of crudo, yet another fritto, and it's delicious, but a little voice inside asks you for a steak. Or a plate of ravioli with meat sauce. Or simply to get in the car and head up, leave the sea behind for a few hours and slip into a valley.

Around here it's easy. Imperia is glued to the sea, but just turn around and behind it are the valleys: the Prino, the Maro, the Impero, one after another, with the villages hanging off the hills and the olive mills at the end of narrow roads. The cooking changes all at once. The anchovy disappears, and in come game, snails, herb ravioli, charcuterie boards. It's another world, and it's twenty minutes away.

This isn't a ranking, and these aren't reviews. They're the places I go, or where I've been taken, when I'm in the mood for land. You'll find them all below in the block with addresses and details; here I'll tell you about them quickly, so you know what you're walking into.

We start in town, because you don't always have to drive miles. In Porto Maurizio, across from the Teatro Cavour, there's Osteria Didù. It's in the Michelin Guide, but don't let that scare you off: it's an osteria, simple, with Ligurian cooking done properly. The dishes everyone mentions are the stuffed mussels and the borage ravioli with tocco, that meat sauce they call by that name in Genoa. Land and sea on the same menu, which is the best thing about Liguria anyway. One word of warning: it's closed on Tuesdays, note that before you set off.

Borage-filled ravioli, the fresh pasta of Ligurian tradition

If instead the craving for meat is the serious kind, the no-sea-bass-please kind, there's a place that already has its name written on its face: Osteria Porca Vacca. It's under the arcades of Calata Cuneo, at the port of Oneglia, paradoxically a stone's throw from the fishing boats, but inside it's all about meat. Steaks, the famous giro carne, Piedmontese beef from farmers who know their trade. It's a no-nonsense place, no frills, and when you're hungry for red protein it's exactly what you're looking for.

Then there's the real occasion, the dinner you remember. In Oneglia, my own neighbourhood, there's Salvo Cacciatori. The family's story begins in 1905, and for over sixty years it's been one of the names the Michelin Guide keeps on its list in Liguria. They don't mess about here: the Oneglia-style stockfish, the flagship dish of my home, and the cappon magro, that cathedral of fish and vegetables that is a feast turned into a dish. It's not an everyday dinner, nor a beach-budget one, but if you're after the right place to celebrate something, this is it.

Cappon magro, the cathedral of fish and vegetables of festive Ligurian cooking

Oneglia-style stockfish, stewed with country bread, the flagship dish of Oneglia

And now we go up, because that's where things get interesting.

My favourite, I'll tell you straight away, is Censin da Bea. It's in Borgomaro, up the valley, about twenty minutes from the sea, and it's the nearest of the real valley places. It's inside an eighteenth-century olive mill: you walk in and you still find the old stone grindstones, the wood, the rooms of long ago. The cooking is that of the Ligurian mountains, the kind that has never seen the sea: Ligurian-style snails, guinea fowl, game. It's the kind of place where you sit down and realise you've crossed over to the other side of the hill, and that you did the right thing.

Ligurian-style rabbit with Taggiasca olives and pine nuts, the cooking of the valleys

If you want to push a touch further, there's Valloria, the village of painted doors, a hamlet of Prelà. Up there is the osteria the locals half-call Antiche Bontà di Valloria and half-call La Porta dei Sapori; it's the same one. Pure hill country: boards of local cheese and cured meats, borage ravioli, simple things made with what grows around. You get there among the doors painted one by one by artists, which on their own are worth the climb.

And then Dolcedo, one of the prettiest villages in the Prino valley, the one with the stone bridge and the old mills. There you'll find Casa della Rocca, set in an old mill with the grindstone still in the middle of the room. Here the register lifts: it's refined Ligurian cooking, land and sea on the same plate, with a touch of Piedmont that around here, sitting as close to the border as we do, always fits. It's in the Michelin selection, and it's the right place if you want valley food but with an idea behind the cooking.

Local honesty: these inland places aren't round the corner, and some close a day or two during the week, or only at certain times of year. You always make a phone call before getting in the car, especially out of season, because up there the hours follow the rhythm of the village, not the tourist's. But that's exactly the point: you go up to eat something different, and you find yourself in a different world.

When the craving for fish comes back, and it will, the port of Oneglia is always there waiting for you. And if you love meat over coals or neighbourhood osterie with a soul, I've got two to tell you about properly: the story of from the pan to the coals and the one about Osteria dei Pippi. But those, as we say around here, are two other stories.