Go To This Beach Club In Portonovo, Italy Solely For This Pasta Dish

Okay, also for the beach too.

Was it worth the trip? Absolutely. Which sparked a new series, covering delicious things good enough to justify the journey in the first place….worth the trip time and time again. A dish that lingers in the mind, a superb cocktail, a spectacular breakfast spread, a food-centric hotel and really anything that makes you drool long after you're gone.

First up, the beach club that started it all, and the pasta that lured me there.

The shakerato comes first, always—espresso shaken hard over ice until it's frothy, then strained into a glass. It's Italy's answer to iced coffee, and drinking one on a beach chair before the sun is blazing is the best way to start the day on this coast, in this case at Spiaggia Bonetti , a beach club on Baia di Portonovo in Italy's Marche region.

I chose Spiaggia Bonetti for one reason, the spaghetti con moscioli, spaghetti tossed with wild mussels pulled straight from this stretch of coast. Picking a beach club by its pasta instead of its sunbeds sounds excessive, but in Italy, a pasta dish worth the hype can do this to someone. The green and white striped parasols that turn the whole beach into one long postcard didn't hurt either.

Beach club food rarely suffices. Most of what lands on a sunbed-side table is an afterthought to the umbrella rental. Spiaggia Bonetti, run by the Bonetti family, is the exception and easily worth building a whole beach day around.

We started with ragusa in porchetta, a preparation I haven't come across much outside this stretch of Marche. Ragusa is a spiral sea snail, closer to a small murex than a clam, usually simmered in tomato with garlic and chili like most small Adriatic mollusks. Prepared "in porchetta" flips that, cooking the snail without tomato and seasoning it with bay leaf and white wine instead, the way you'd season a roast. Sea flavor, land seasoning, and somehow it works.

Then the dish I'd planned the whole trip around, spaghetti con moscioli. Moscioli have been documented on this stretch of coast since the early 1900s, plucked by hand from rocks between the Passetto di Ancona and Sirolo rather than farmed the way most mussels are today, which gives them a denser, more mineral bite than a standard mussel. Slow Food recognized the wild mosciolo as a Presidio in 2004, and hand harvesting like this has grown rare, not just in Italy but worldwide, as farmed mussels took over.

The pasta can make or break a dish too. Here, the spaghetti comes from Pasta Latini , an artisan pastificio in Osimo about 30 minutes inland, where Carlo and Carla Latini have spent decades working almost entirely with Italian durum wheat. In 1991, Carlo revived Senatore Cappelli, a nearly forgotten durum variety bred in 1915, and it's stayed central to the pastificio's identity since. I think it's part of what makes this specific dish even more delicious.

We didn't stop there. Gnocchi followed, pillowy, in a ragù di mare bianco, aka a mixed seafood sauce. It's a cleaner style than the tomato-heavy versions most spots default to. Then came a plate of Adriadtic fritto misto, the always-tempting classic mixed fried seafood and vegetables We washed it all down with a glass of Marche rosato.

Marche runs along the country's calf between Emilia-Romagna and Abruzzo, built on small provincial cities, family-run vineyards and a coastline most travelers skip past entirely (for now, that is). Monte Conero is the reason this particular curve of coast stands out, the only point between Trieste and the Gargano promontory in Puglia where a mountain drops straight into the sea, on a coast that otherwise runs flat and sandy….with turquoise clear waters.

This stretch of coast also holds Blue Flag status, an environmental designation awarded annually by the Foundation for Environmental Education. It's recertified every year and requires clean water, active environmental management and reliable safety standards.

Getting there takes some planning. Parking is rough in July and August, one lot at the top of Monte Conero and a switchback road that backs up fast on weekends. The fix is Marecomodo , a private parking-and-shuttle service bookable through Bonetti's website when booking your beach chairs. Reserve a spot in the hilltop lot, and a van runs you straight down to the beach and back again whenever you call for it in the afternoon.

Even in peak season, it was worth the trip….for the pasta alone.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com