Travel Discovery: The Island of Delitious

What a beautifuI, tasty scene. I am flying over this extraordinary island paradise.

It is difficult to describe. It is oddly shaped, like a filet of sole ringed by sandy beaches looking as if had been battered and breaded by God herself. Just offshore is this white volcano, bubbling with a pool of yellow lava in the middle. One edge of the island is ringed with glistening rounded foliage, looking like baked brussel sprouts.

No wonder early explorers christened this The Island of Delitious.

The island’s history is quite dramatic. It was once a desert spread out on a thin, doughy landscape dotted with white and yellow boulders and the carcasses and skins of dead fauna. The crash of an asteroid baked it into a crust that melted the boulders, leaving the carcasses sizzling. Early sailors, following flocks of seagulls, landed here and named it The Isle of Yum, devouring it ruins, partying with the seagulls, and leaving a gooey mess before armadas of ants and flies attacked.

The seagulls laid waste to what was left.

What is now the Island of Delitious lay in ruin until the Age of Discovery when Italian explorer Tutto Mundo landed upon its shores. His chef, Buon Appetito explored the ruins and uncovered its history, which he reassembled in a tribute he named…Pizza.  He also introduced a strange worm his pal Marco Polo appropriated from China called…Linguini, which paired well with the clams – abundant on the island’s beaches –  and the lemons brought on board Mundo’s ship to prevent scurvy.

Mundo and his crew had found their paradise. They settled, became obese, died and left no heirs as there were no women on board. In a repeat of history, the ants attacked and the seagulls cleaned up the rest but provided a bed of fertile guano for the future.

The modern-day Island of Delitious traces its history to chef Luigi Bologna who, after escaping the sinking Titanic, washed up on shore clutching a bottle of 1869 Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

Bologna found the island a wreck but saw its potential. Under his leadership, The Island of Delitious became a magnet for top chefs from around the world. Over more than a century it developed into what Michelin called its first Billion Star Island, meaning that you could lie, sated and satified, on a dill pickle or lettuce leaf, gazing heavenward, gently belching, and drink in the awe of the universe.

If you would like to visit, best do it soon, before it spoils…or it is again repossessed by the ants and seagulls.