If to the victor go the spoils, then to the vanquished go the cuisine.

When the Roman philosopher Seneca was banished to live in exile two millennia ago, he was sent to Corsica, a mountainous island with rugged beaches surrounded by the clear Mediterranean Sea off the coasts of France and Italy. There are worse fates.

Just don’t call it France. Although the island is officially part of that country, Corsicans are fiercely independent, with graffiti of “This is not France” scrawled frequently in Corsu, the ancient Tuscan dialect that many residents still speak. Perhaps because of that spirit, most Corsican foods—singular and delicious beyond belief—rarely leave the island and are found almost exclusively in Corsica.

Although a traveler would expect menus bursting