Sicilian Mattanza Dinner
Held at Incanto on May 31, 2004
They were like fishes, which fishermen have netted out of the sea, and thrown upon the beach to lie gasping for water till the heat of the sun makes an end of them.
Homer, The Odyssey, Book XXII, 800 B.C.
The Northern Bluefin
The Northern bluefin tuna (thunnus thynnus) holds an almost mythic position among the world's pelagic fish. Aristotle described the migratory and reproductive habits of tuna in his treatise History of Animals, written in 350 B.C. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians stamped their coins with an image of a bluefin tuna. In
the first 
century A.D., Pliny the Elder prescribed various parts of the tuna as homeopathic remedies for human ailments. In more recent history, Arabs, Spanish, and Italians have incorporated tuna not only into their diets, but also into their poetry, music and culture.
One of the world's very few truly warm-blooded fish, the bluefin is able to maintain its body temperature between 10° and 20° Fahrenheit higher than the surrounding water. The principal advantage of this ability is increased muscle power; muscles contract more rapidly when warm without loss of energy. As a result, the bluefin is able to swim very fast, up to 45 miles per hour, and travel very long distances. Over a period of 35 weeks, one bluefin was tracked via satellite as it roamed from Sardinia to Spain, out into the Atlantic via Gibraltar, down past the Equator, then up to Greenland. Bluefin tuna are world travelers.
Bluefin fisheries have long been an important human commercial activity, owing to the bluefin's awesome size and the extraordinary quality of its meat. Able to live up to 40 years, specimens have weighed in at more than 1,500 pounds. Their firm flesh is dark red, with a high fat content, favorably comparable to beef. A single bluefin in Tokyo's famed Tsukiji fish market can fetch more than $100,000.
Like salmon, bluefin tuna are migratory fish that return annually to their original spawning grounds. The Northern bluefin, which lives throughout the Atlantic, spawns either in the Gulf of Mexico or in the Mediterranean. A bluefin that spawns in the Mediterranean will spend its spring in the north along the Spanish and French coasts, then head southeast toward the warmer waters of North Africa and Greece, then return to the Atlantic Ocean after spawning season has completed. A bluefin takes 5-8 years to reach maturity, after which it will return to the spawning ground where it was born. The Northern bluefin's predictable spawning pattern is critical to the mattanza.
An Ancient Ritual
For centuries, bluefin tuna have been seasonally trapped along the coastlines of the Mediterranean as they migrate through local waters at the same time each year. The most famous of these, the mattanza, still takes place each year in the waters of
Favignana, the southernmost of the Egadi Islands, just west of Sicily, as the bluefin pass each year in May and early June on their way to the Eastern Mediterranean.
The ritual of the mattanza is carried out by a group of local fishermen, tonnarotti, who are led by the rais, from the Arab word meaning
"head." The rais coordinates all activities of the ciurma, the gang of tonnarotti, who construct the complex series of nets that form the trap, manage the trap and then slaughter the tuna collected within, whenever the trap is deemed full enough by the rais. Though now practiced by Sicilian fisherman, the mattanza owes its origins mostly to Arab and Spanish traditions. The word mattanza itself comes from an Old Spanish word matar, which means "to kill", which in turn
comes from the Latin term mactare, meaning "to slaughter or honor." Over the centuries, the mattanza has been passed from the Arabs, to the Norman kings, to nobles, billionaire merchants, and lately, owing to the dramatic decline in the bluefin tuna population, to small-time Sicilian entrepreneurs.
Each year's mattanza unfolds over three months. In April, the rais directs the ciurma to deploy the tonnara in the waters approximately three kilometers from the western end of the island. The tonnara is a trap comprised of miles of steel cable, more than 400 iron anchors weighing from 600 to 4,000 pounds, more than 3,500 stone weights, and enormous nets, today made of nylon or Indian
coconut fiber. The tonnara's two kilometers-long wings guide the tuna to an entrance to the first chamber, called levante, approximately 50 meters square. A series of six successive chambers, each divided by a net gate, leads to the trap's final chamber, la camera della morte, "the chamber of death," which unlike the other chambers, has a net floor that can be raised, bringing all the tuna within to the water's surface. After construction of the tonnara is complete, the rais sets into the waters near
the entrance of the trap a ten-foot wooden cross bearing pictures of the patron saints of Favignana, a bronze statue of Saint Peter, a plume of fresh palm fronds, blessed on Palm Thursday, and a bouquet of white lilies. At each stage of work, the tonnarotti sing a series of scialome, superstitious songs, passed down over so many generations that the men no longer understand the meaning of many of the words they are singing.
After the trap has been set, the tonnarotti spend their days maintaining the nets, counting the tuna as they enter, and corralling them from one chamber to the next. When the rais decides the tonnara is full enough with tuna, he calls for a mattanza.
On the morning of the mattanza, the men of the ciurma surround the final chamber of the tonnara with their boats, singing in unison as they pull up the net that brings the bluefin to the surface of the water. Soon the water is roiling with the giant silvery-blue fish. Teams of four to eight men slam ten-foot long sharpened gaffes into the backs of the tuna and drag the fish into the holds of their boats. When they are finished, the camera della morte has been emptied of tuna and transformed into a square of bloody pink foam, soon to be washed away by the strong currents. Over the remainder of the season, the mattanza is repeated, as many times as the rais determines is necessary, depending on the quantity of tuna entering the trap. The season ends by the end of June, if possible by the feast day of St. Anthony on June 13.
Brutality or Sustainability?
Is the mattanza an antiquated, barbaric act that celebrates the violent slaughter of majestic animals? Or is it a dignified tradition, deserving preservation, which teaches us about our history, our relationship to our food, to the sea and about the human need to ritualize important acts? The answer, of course, is "yes" to all of the above.
Unless you are a complete vegetarian for moral reasons, it is hypocritical to vilify the mattanza while turning a blind eye to the rapacious practices of modern commercial fishing. Similarly, it is a mistake to glorify the mattanza without understanding the big picture. The best approach to making sense of the mattanza is to appreciate its historic, economic, and most of all its cultural dimensions. The important questions, however, have nothing to do with whether the mattanza is good or bad. The truly pressing issues concern the fate of the Northern bluefin tuna and, closely related, why the mattanza itself is teetering on the brink of extinction.
There were once hundreds of tuna traps set annually throughout the Mediterranean in Algeria, Corsica, France, Italy, Tunisia, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. In Sicily alone there were more than 50 coastal tuna traps. Today they are almost all gone, having been replaced over the last 40 years by commercial fishing ships and most notably the introduction of long-line fishing in 1961, as well as by destructive, non-selective fishing methods such as drift nets, gill nets and purse seines. Now, instead of waiting for the tuna to pass nearby only once each year, factory fishing boats seek out the tuna in the open sea, using sonar, spotter planes and helicopters to locate their catch. Modern technology has enabled us to accomplish in 40 years what the mattanza did not d0 over 900 years – overfish the bluefin.
Since 1969, the 22 member countries of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) have kept records of tuna catch and population in the Atlantic for the purpose of establishing international standards to keep the stock of tuna at a level that produces the maximum sustainable yield each year. While the data collection efforts have been successful, ICCAT's conservation efforts have been almost completely ineffective. The Atlantic bluefin tuna population has declined by more than 90% of its pre-longline levels. As a result, bluefin are now estimated to be at less than 12% of the level needed to produce a maximum sustainable yield. Simply put, the fishing practices that have replaced the mattanza have also put us on the verge of fishing this animal into extinction.
Loss of Ritual
The most obvious differences between the mattanza and modern commercial fishing have to do with technology and scale. The other significant, and perhaps more important, difference is the complete absence of ritual from modern commercial fishing. Whether or not you think we are better off as a civilization without the mattanza's brutal slaughter, it is undeniably true that today's modern fishermen neither fear nor worship the bluefin in the manner of the tonnarotti. As societies, we no longer stamp them on our coins, prescribe them as medicine, sing songs about them, or raise altars to them. The bluefin has become mere food, to be supplanted by other food when its supply is extinguished.
Without ritual, without reverence, the bluefin tuna now serves as an example of how modern life protects us from the realities of our food sources, with potentially disastrous effect. We don't claim to have an answer to these problems. But we do believe we can start by becoming informed diners, by exploring the origins of our food sources, and understanding the practices used to produce our food.
Weighty matters aside, we are both pleased and honored that you have chosen to dine with us this evening. We look forward to providing you with a memorable dining experience, full of lively discussion, companionship, and an authentic taste of Sicily.
About the Food
Antipasto of due tonni*
Dinner commences with pure tuna flavor, taken to its two extremes. Tuna crudo, consists of slices of fresh raw fish, dressed simply with lemon, Egadi sea salt and extra-virgin olive oil. Terrific locally grown capers, from a backyard producer in Santa Cruz (one of the few in the United States producing capers), add a spicy dimension to this dish. The clean, fresh taste of the tuna crudo is contrasted by the briny pungence of tuna mosicame , air-dried tuna loin, cured in-house, shaved into thin slices and served with a fennel salad.
Spaghetti alla chitarra with tuna conserva, tuna bottarga, lemon & hot pepper
Spaghetti alla chitarra are square-cut fresh spaghetti, cut using a chitarra, or "guitar," which is a wooden box with thin wires strung across both sides. Sheets of freshly rolled pasta are placed upon the wires and then cut into noodles by passing a rolling pin over the pasta then "playing" the pasta through the wires with one's fingertips. The pasta is served in a classic Mediterranean combination of tuna conserva, which is tuna cooked confit-style, using low heat under olive oil with herbs and spices, producing tender, extremely flavorful cooked tuna and grated bottarga, which is dried tuna roe. Lemon, parsley and hot pepper help cut through the richness of the tuna, lending brightness and balance to the dish.
Tonnarotti-style tuna braised in nero d'avola
Traditional mattanza dinners revolve around the tonnarotti using virtually every part of the tuna except the meat, which is considered too valuable to eat. The fish's gills and innards are braised in a rich stew. Bones are ground for fertilizer to grow vegetables. Even the tail of the fish is nailed over doorways for good luck. In our world, these parts of the fish are tossed overboard by commercial fishing outfits, making them unavailable to us (unless we catch the fish ourselves). In the spirit of this tradition, however, we are presenting a rich red wine-braised dish of yellowfin tuna featuring quintessential Sicilian flavors including green olives, capers, tomato, and orange zest. Sicily's most prominent wine grape, nero d'avola, lends its dark fruit flavors to a fish that is able to stand up to a pairing with red wine.
Black cherry babà al rhum with lemon crème fraiche
One of Southern Italy's classic desserts: a brioche soaked in a fruit-infused rum syrup, with a dollop of lemon crème fraîche. Found in Sicily, Naples and Spain, the sweetness of babà al rhum betrays its Arabic origins, making this a perfect final salute to the theme of tonight's dinner.
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Note: Both Northern and Southern bluefin tuna have been so overfished in the last 40 years that we of course are not serving any bluefin tuna this evening, instead we are serving Pacific yellowfin tuna. Northern and Southern bluefin tuna are two of the seven members of the thunnus genus. The other five are: albacore, bigeye tuna, blackfin tuna, long tail tuna, and yellowfin tuna.
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About Incanto
Incanto restaurant and wine bar opened in June 2002, bringing California-Italian food and an exceptional Italian wine program to San Francisco's Noe Valley neighborhood. Incanto's rustic Italian setting, with handcrafted stone-, brick- and woodwork, 16th century Latin parchments, and private dining room dedicated to Dante Alighieri, provide a uniquely romantic dining environment. In the past year, Incanto has been recognized by the National Restaurant Association with an award for "America's Best Wine List," by San Francisco Magazine as the "Wine Director of the Year" and "Bay Area's top 75 Best Restaurants," and on the San Francisco Chronicle's list of "The Bay Area's Top 100 Restaurants." Chef Chris Cosentino, whose passion for authentic food and respect for culinary traditions drove the concept for tonight's dinner, planned and prepared this evening's menu. Sommelier Claudio Villani selected the wine pairings.
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Incanto Italian Restaurant, 1550 Church Street, Noe Valley, San Francisco 94131
415-641-4500 - Email: info@incanto.biz