A room built from salt, smoke,
and the people next door.
We opened Salìna in a former fishing-net workshop in Malfa, on the island that gave us our name. Everything in the room was already on this island — or made by someone an hour's boat ride away.
Lia grew up here. Vito came to spend a summer and never went back to Bologna. We took over the shop from her uncle in the spring of 2019, painted the walls with island lime, and put the cellar where the nets used to dry. The first night we opened, twelve people came. Six were related to us.
We pour wines made by people who farm without herbicide, who don't add things they don't need to, who pick by hand because the slope is too steep for a tractor. Most of them live within sight of our front door. A few are old friends from the mainland. None of them are famous.
The kitchen is small and we like it that way. We cook a handful of things very carefully, with ingredients that come from people we know by their first name. The menu changes when the fisherman calls, or when Nonna Lia decides the tomatoes are wrong this week.
— Lia & Vito
Vini vivi
Wines made by hand, fermented with wild yeast, bottled with as little added as possible.
Sotto i 100 km
Almost everything we serve comes from less than a hundred kilometres of where you are sitting.
Pochi piatti
Six to nine plates on any given night. Cooked one at a time, in a small copper pan.
Una tavola lunga
One long table for everybody. You will probably end up eating with the table next to you.
What we are pouring,
what we are cooking, tonight.
The list changes most weeks. Bottles run out, fish runs in, a vineyard up the hill calls to say the new vintage is ready. This is what is on the table for the week of 27 Maggio.
Photographs from the room,
and the island around it.
A handful of pictures, mostly taken by friends who came to dinner and stayed late. Click to see them larger.
Reserve a seat.
Tutto in quattro passi.
We hold about half the room for walk-ins and the other half for reservations. In summer the second half goes faster than the first. The form below is a real one — we will hold the table the moment you finish it.
When would you like
to come?
The night is long and the bottle is open.”
The room,
when to find us in it.
Twenty-four seats inside, twelve on the terrace, one long oak table at the back for groups. Reservations strongly suggested in summer.
- LunedìRiposoClosed
- MartedìAperitivo17:30 — 23:00
- MercoledìCena17:30 — 00:00
- GiovedìCena17:30 — 00:00
- VenerdìCena Lunga17:30 — 01:00
- SabatoPranzo · Cena12:30 — 01:00
- DomenicaPranzo · Cena12:30 — 23:00
Malfa · Isola di Salina · 98050 (ME)Per telefono+39 090 984 4321Per scrittotavolo@salinawine.it
What people have written
about the room.
We are flattered, mostly. We try not to read it during service.
The kind of room you stumble into and somehow stay until midnight, dressed in olive oil and conversation.
Lia and Vito have built something that feels found, not designed — a wine bar that is, quietly, one of the most assured rooms in Italy.
A salty, sun-soft cellar list with a serious bias toward what grows nearby. Drink wide here.
The whole room,
for the whole night.
We close to the public a handful of nights each season. Long tables, our cellar opened wide, a menu written for your party. Anniversaries, intimate weddings, the occasional book launch, the very occasional small revolution.
- I.Tavolata LungaUp to 18 guests on the terrace, family-style. Six courses, paired.12 — 18 guests
- II.PrivatizzazioneThe whole room for an evening. Menu and music written for you.Up to 40 guests
- III.VerticaleA walk through one producer in eight glasses. Led by Vito.8 — 14 guests
- IV.Pranzo in VignaLong lunch in the Hauner vineyard, ten minutes up the hill.6 — 24 guests