ITALY
La Bella Italia: Where food and travel perfectly intersect
Toss clichéd ideas of pasta piled plates out the window. From the snowy north to the sun-baked south, Italy has a flair for flavor that traveling taste buds will never forget.
WORDS FLIP BYRNES
ITALY
La Bella Italia: Where food and travel perfectly intersect
Toss clichéd ideas of pasta piled plates out the window. From the snowy north to the sun-baked south, Italy has a flair for flavor that traveling taste buds will never forget.
WORDS FLIP BYRNES
Enjoy the sights (and tastes) of the Amalfi Coast.
Italy is one of the places in Europe where food is inextricably linked to every part of life. Whether you’re dining in the golden piazza’s of Rome, meandering the ancient vineyards of Tuscany or rubbing shoulders with the locals in a Sicilian village, you’re guaranteed a treat for your tastebuds on a delicious food safari.
Click on an icon on the map to find out what the region is best known for.
Dolomite Region
Tosela cheese is produced the day of milking, preserving the fragrance of the mountain pasture herbs. In this region, finish off an exhilarating slope day with an après ski Bombardino, a hot cocktail of milk, whiskey, and zabaglione (an egg-based custard).
Skiing downhill below fierce mountain peaks piercing the sky like fangs, we pull up suddenly, creating a supernova of snow spray that hits the side of a mountain restaurant like frozen champagne bubbles. But no champagne is on the menu today. Oh no, deep in Italy’s Dolomites above the epicurean hotspot of Alta Badia, we’re pausing for a hearty dish of Tyrolean Schlutzkrapfen.
Hearts race from the heady aromas swirling from the doorway, or maybe it's the altitude. Either way, we can’t click our skis off fast enough.
Travel is sensory, with the best memories created by taste, especially in a country like Italy literally dripping with flavor.
So, while the restaurant name is long forgotten, the belly warmth of half-moon Schlutzkrapfen ravioli oozing alpine Tosela cheese and the sound of clumping of ski boots on wood against the staccato ancient Ladin mountain dialect seems a mere napkin fold ago. Ah, la bella Italia.
Ravioli with Tosela cheese in Alta Badia.
Image: Alex Moling
Travel in Italy is sensory, with the best memories created by taste.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Friuli-Venezia Giulia’s San Daniele has a microclimate producing Italy’s most melt-in-the-mouth prosciutto. The official Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) label means a product has been made in a certified area with specific practices, in this case the 13-square-mile area encompassing San Daniele del Friuli.
Reminiscing about a favorite food moment with the same intensity as remembering a long-lost lover is one consequence of deep diving into Italian cuisine. The other is wide-eyed wonder; the focus on hyper local produce and traditions rendering no meal the same. The 20 regioni differ even on basics — pasta with or without egg, butter in abundance or ditched for olive oil. So come hungry — a surprise lurks in every forkful.
Never forgo the speciality in a region — fragrant basil and aromatic olive oil make Genova pesto central, Bologna is home to Ragù alla Bolognese (not the global bolognaise mutations), Parma is the Big Cheese for parmesan, and Torino boasts a superstar: white truffles.
“Reminiscing about a favorite food moment with the same intensity as remembering a long-lost lover is one consequence of deep diving into Italian cuisine.”
Prosciutto hanging in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
Image: Città di Torino and Turismo Torino e Provincia
You're unlikely to get much of a consensus across Italy's 20 regioni, with each differing on even the most basic of elements.
San Daniele Prosciutto is Italy’s quiet achiever.
Image: Città di Torino and Turismo Torino e Provincia
Caffe Torino in the city center.
Turin
Join the buzzing pre-dinner crowd in Turin’s tradition of aperitivo, swilling appetite-stimulating cocktails like Americanos, Aperol-Spritzes, and Negronis. Brightly-hued local soft drinks such as Sanbitter and Crodino infused with similar botanicals to Campari and Aperol, offer alternatives minus the usual alcoholic left hook.
The white truffles of Torino are infamous and elusive.
Tartufi bianchi are like unicorns. They flourish in the wild and are elusive.
For the proper gusto (taste), devour them fresh in Turin in Tagliolini al tartufo bianco (a pasta dish from nearby truffle-arama Alba). Join the nightly aperitivo and explore the elegant squares and portici of this sophisticated city, dipping into bars serving stuzzichini (snacks, including truffle during October) and colorful cocktails.
Wander the enchanting labyrinth of laneways in Tuscany's Montepulciano.
Montepulciano
Tuscan olive oil can be as elevated and complex as wine, such as that made at Castello di Trebbio, a biodynamic farm 30 minutes from Florence. When freshly poured from the frantoio (olive press), Tuscan olive oil is as brilliant green as springtime shoots with a peppery, rather than buttery, taste.
Did someone say… drinks? Dribbling down the ‘Boot’, pause to wander the enchanting labyrinth of laneways in Tuscany’s hilltop town of Montepulciano, arriving in a crescendo at the top square (a film set for the first Twilight movie). The ideal place to sip the best wine in Italy, a velvety Nobile di Montepulciano.
“Hold it right there!” screeches Chianti. “Ahem, scusi?” sniffs Veneto’s Prosecco and “Can I get some love down here?” whimpers Puglia’s Primitivo grapes. OK, calm down everyone. Italy overflows with world class vino, from Piedmont’s Barolo to the nearby Brunello di Montalcino. But tasting a local Nobile, a tradition steeped from the 8th century, makes anything else hard to swallow.
Vineyards of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.
Barrels of Nobile di Montepulciano beneath the famous vineyard.
You won't find a more charming harbor town than Vernazza.
Amalfi Coast
Lemons here are not like any lemons you’ve ever had before. The Sfusato Amalfitano and the Limone di Sorrento are huge with soft skins and a sweet taste. Take any chance to ingest it – the intense lemon zest gives pasta a twang, the gelato a tartness and the local Monkfish a pop.
We’re heading south and it’s getting hot and steamy, and we don’t just mean the weather. Naples is a live wire, charged with raw energy. Standing in Spaccanapoli, the dynamic pedestrian street dividing the city, snacking on a folded pizza (as one must) is a sensory assault. There’s the aural joy of foreign accents, the spectacular guess-the-nationality people-watching, grilling pizza sending smoke signals to quivering nostrils – sensations we all lust when coming to Italy.
Citrus from the Amalfi Coast.
But immediately south there’s a quieter pace of life on the pastel hued Amalfi coast, and it’s the place to indulge in every seafood fantasy. For me, that’s at Il Pirata in tiny Praiano near Positano, spectacularly dug into a cliff wall. The sea gurgles nearby, the fish are so fresh they’re still flapping, customers arrive by speedboat and the menu moves with the rhythm of the seasons made of simple choices featuring respect for raw materials. Like the octopus with honey and leek, the pear and ricotta cheesecake, or of course, the limoncello from the magnificent Limone di Sorrento.
Puglia is on the rise as a destination, in part thanks to James Bond,
Puglia
Translated literally, cucina povera means poor kitchen, but really refers to the frugal genius of mainly housewives making the most of limited agriculture in the hard soil, and wasting nothing. Hence the birth of dishes like frizelle salentine, hard bread doused with water and olive oil, served with vine-ripened tomatoes and herbs. Simple, but flavorsome.
Just three hours away in the east coast, life is very different from the dolce far niente of the chi-chi Amalfi Coast. Puglia is Italy’s rising tourism star thanks to films like the latest movie in the Bond franchise, No Time To Die set in jaw dropping Matera. But Matera, the world’s third oldest most continuously inhabited city (9,000 years) and a UNESCO site before even Pompeii, was once deemed an unsanitary slum in the 1950’s where families lived in caves without running water or electricity.
But just as Matera reached giddy new heights as the European Capital of Culture in 2019, the local cuisine shaped by poverty and aptly named la cucina povera, is suddenly gourmet. One of the most glorious Matera pastimes is to feast on a dinner of fava beans and wild boar, the simple hearty countryside food at a cave restaurant such as rustic La Lopa. Time your walk to dinner to coincide with twilight, when subdued light brushes the stone with a tip dipped in watery indigo and the sound of birdsong reverberates through the ravine below.
Fresh seafood is a key, and widely available along the Italian coast.
You could keep heading south to Sicily for red prawns, citrus and Sarde a beccafico (baked breadcrumbed sardines stuffed with pine nuts and raisins), west to the porcheddu (suckling pig) and bottarga (dried mullet roe) of rustic Sardegna and in Calabria, eggplant and chilli anything, a lasting flavor legacy from the Arabs.
But at some point you need to put down the fork, accept one trip will never be enough to taste all of Italy’s flavors, and join the inner sanctum of those who know that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ because even back then they knew the joys of taking a very long lunch.
Watching any of the seven episodes of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy on CNN will result in grabbing a pair of elasticized waist pants and packing a bag.
The Academy Award winning host and actor not only unearths to-die-for dishes, but explores rich Italian history and the intricacies of the human condition via food. From Sicily to Milan, this is a perfect antipasto of viewing, before a main course of hardcore travel.
Watching any of the seven episodes of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy on CNN will result in grabbing a pair of elasticied waist pants and packing a bag.
The Academy Award winning host and actor not only unearths to-die-for dishes, but explores rich Italian history and the intricacies of the human condition via food. From Sicily to Milan, this is a perfect antipasto of viewing, before a main course of hardcore travel.
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