Santa Marì

Santa Marì Catalan Bistrot is the Sale-family-run modern Catalan-Sardinian dining room on Via Roma. The main pedestrian artery of the Centro Storico, three streets from the Cathedral. And is the village's most reliable contemporary Catalan-fusion programme. The space is a converted 19th-century townhouse with hand-carved walnut beams, a long zinc bar at the front of the room, and forty-eight covers across an indoor dining room and an outdoor cobblestoned terrace.

The cuisine is contemporary Catalan-Sardinian. Signatures include a hand-rolled fregola sarda with Sardinian sea-urchin and Catalan parsley; a Catalan-style 'esqueixada de bacalla'. Salt-cod tartare with Pachino tomato; a slow-cooked Logudoro lamb shoulder with rosemary and saffron; a hand-cut culurgiones with Catalan sobrassada; a wood-fired Mediterranean turbot 'al sale di Cabras'; the famous 'crema catalana' for the dessert course.

The wine list runs to 250 references with a Catalan-Sardinian split. Half Sardinian smallholders, half Catalan (Priorat, Empordà, Penedès). And a tightly chosen Italian-national section. Glass pours start at €4 and the by-the-glass programme runs a generous Catalan-Sardinian comparative flight. The cocktail bar at the front of the restaurant runs a serious aperitif programme.

The room runs at moderate-to-high volume on a Saturday night; the kitchen is open until 23:30 most evenings. Service is family-run. The Sale siblings rotate the floor.

Santa Marì is the easy-first-date room in Alghero when the brief is contemporary rather than traditional. The cocktail-bar opening makes an easy pre-dinner drinks experience; the Catalan-Sardinian fusion is genuinely conversation-worthy; the kitchen runs at a friendly mid-tier register. Book the corner two-top by the open kitchen.