Vasto eats well. The town's signature dish is the brodetto vastese — a thick fish stew with at least nine kinds of fish, simmered in a clay pot with tomato, olive oil, peperoncino, and a touch of vinegar. It bears almost no relationship to the brodetti of further north on the Adriatic, and is the thing to order on the seafront.
The marina has a long line of trattorias and pizzerias along the beach road. Up in the centro storico, the restaurants are smaller and tend more toward traditional Abruzzese cooking — pasta alla chitarra, grilled lamb, arrosticini.