Casadelmar, Porto-Vecchio, restaurant review, VANE

Name: Casadelmar
Address: Porto-Vecchio

The only two-star dining room in Corsica, inside the Casadelmar hotel above the Gulf of Porto-Vecchio, where Fabio Bragagnolo reads the island through an Italian hand, the day's catch and the maquis hillside turned with precision from a terrace over the water.

By Dimitris Stathopoulos

The cooking

Modern Mediterranean, Corsican and Italian at once. Fabio Bragagnolo holds the kitchen at Casadelmar, the low design hotel set among umbrella pines on the Route de Palombaggia, south of Porto-Vecchio, with the gulf below. He cooks the island and the sea around it rather than a menu carried over from the mainland: fish and shellfish off the Corsican coast, the maquis herbs of the hillside, olive oil and citrus, read through the clarity of an Italian kitchen. The plates stay precise rather than busy, a John Dory confit in olive oil with red lentils, burrata and a tomato-water emulsion among the dishes the guide singles out, and the pastry runs its own line, a raspberry and Corsican pomelo course with juniper and scented geranium, low on sugar. The menu turns with the season and the morning's landings. The restaurant works the warm months only, roughly late April to early October, and the dining spills onto a terrace above the water, the pines and the gulf through the glass. Service keeps the ease of a small house rather than the starch of a palace room.

Why it is in VANE

It holds two Michelin stars in the Michelin Guide France, which covers Corsica, the only restaurant on the island to do so. The case for it is the argument the kitchen makes for Corsica itself: a table that cooks the island's catch and its hillside with the discipline of a serious Italian kitchen, from a design hotel built low into the pines rather than a grand room borrowed from the Riviera. Porto-Vecchio is an old Genoese port on the south-east coast where most things turn on the sea, and the restaurant reads that water closely, open only while the season allows and working to what the boats bring in. It adds Corsica to the collection, an island VANE had not yet reached, and earns the distinction on the plate rather than the postcard. A researched profile, drawn from the restaurant's own record and Michelin's listing, not a first-hand VANE visit.

Where

Casadelmar, Route de Palombaggia, Porto-Vecchio, above the Gulf of Porto-Vecchio, Corsica

Kitchen

Chef Fabio Bragagnolo

Michelin

Two stars, Michelin Guide France (which covers Corsica), the island's only two-star

Style

Modern Mediterranean, Corsican and Italian, seafood-led

Best for

The seasonal menu, on the terrace above the gulf

VANE selection. Chosen with a critic's eye and judged independently. It's here because we judged it, not because it paid.
On this profile: a researched profile, drawn from the restaurant's own record and reporting, not a claim of a first-hand visit. Where we have eaten there, the review says so.
Image: original VANE artwork; photography to follow.

Casadelmar

The cooking

Why it is in VANE

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