Taranto sits on Italy's heel, cradled between two seas: the Mar Grande facing open water and the Mar Piccolo, a calm inland lagoon where mussels have been cultivated since the Greeks founded the city. The mussels from this protected water are fat, sweet, and deeply flavored by the particular salinity and currents that flow through the narrow channel. Fishermen have eaten them this way for centuries, steamed open in whatever the kitchen provided: wine, tomatoes, a crack of dried chili.

This is not a complicated dish. It cannot be. When your mussels are pulled from the water that morning, you do not obscure them with complexity. The garlic here is used correctly: whole cloves, crushed to release their perfume, cooked gently in oil until they give up their harshness, then left to soften in the broth. This is the difference between garlic that enhances and garlic that overwhelms.

What matters is the bread. Without it, you are wasting half the dish. The broth that collects at the bottom of the bowl, stained red from tomato, enriched by mussel liquor, fragrant with wine and parsley, is meant to be soaked up and eaten. I have watched people in Taranto fight politely over who gets to wipe the last of it from the communal pot. They know what is valuable.