Salento has never had a rich man’s cuisine. Its cooking was built from what the land and the sea offered — durum wheat, olive oil, vegetables, fish — and refined over centuries into something that needs no ornament. To eat well here you do not need reservations or lists of famous addresses. You need to know a handful of names, and the right hour for each of them.
Breakfast begins with a pasticciotto
The day starts at the counter of a pasticceria with a pasticciotto: a small oval of short crust pastry filled with custard, served warm, invented in this corner of Puglia and never improved anywhere else. Beside it, a caffè leccese — espresso poured over ice with almond milk, the region’s quiet answer to the summer heat. Eaten standing, in two minutes, it is one of the great breakfasts of Italy.
The table at midday
Midday belongs to pasta made from durum wheat and water, without eggs: orecchiette with tomato and cacioricotta, sagne 'ncannulate — long twisted ribbons — and ciceri e tria, in which part of the pasta is fried until crisp and folded through chickpeas. In summer the simplest dish may be the best: a frisella, twice-baked bread softened in water and dressed with ripe tomatoes, olive oil and oregano. It was invented as food for farmers and fishermen; it tastes like the season itself.
The sea at Gallipoli
For fish, go to Gallipoli. The old town still has a working fish market by the harbour, and the tradition here is crudo: red prawns from the Ionian, scampi, sea urchins in their season, octopus cooked in the pignata. The rule is the one the fishermen use — eat what the boats brought in that morning, and let the kitchen do as little to it as possible.
An evening in Lecce
The evening returns you to Lecce. A rustico leccese — hot puff pastry with mozzarella, tomato and béchamel — bought from a bar window; a glass of Negroamaro or Primitivo, the two great red grapes of this land; a slow dinner in a courtyard where the baroque stone still holds the warmth of the day. Our Suites in the Heart of Lecce stand a few steps from Porta San Biagio, which means the best tables of the old town are all within a short walk — and so is the pasticceria where tomorrow begins.
