I know – it’s a cliché, right?
But let’s be honest; Italy must just about take the cake (ha ha) for gourmet food.
It’s not just the flavours, the ingredients, the passion that goes into the cooking, or the visual mouth-watering smile-inducing plates and bowls of yum, it is also the variety of foods and ingredients used.
Nowhere have I experienced so many choices of say a pizza, pasta or seafood. To name a few.
Every area of Italy has its own take. Its a country made up of 20 regions each with its own provinces, so there’s a lot of variety on offer. And making the taste experience even more delicious is that many of the main ingredients are locally sourced and homemade. Such as olives, oil, pesto, tomato sauces, bread, pizza bases, sauces, tomatoes, cheeses, wines, beer, fruits and so the list grows.
Innumerable recipes are passed down from generation to generation. So that combination of freshness and historical knowledge brings a sense of true love and understanding expressed in the flavour and presentation of meals in Italy.
We visited Italy in 2015 and again in 2018. We ate food taken from the sea, by the sea, in Liguria. Fresh, delicious crispy octopus, shellfish, and other local seafood. We ate food alfresco, under the olive trees in Tuscany where of course the olives, the olive oil, the bread, and the wine were gorgeous and sumptuous. We ate in the hills of Umbria under umbrellas and beneath medieval archways. There we tasted local wild boar, prosciutto, pesto, and tomatoes all locally sourced. And as for the pasta!
I wasn’t keen to eat pasta while in Italy. It struck me as a cliché and a bit of a cop-out when there were so many other gastronomic delights to devour. As a complete philistine when it came to pasta I was put off by its “ordinariness”. A good filler on a cold winter day. Think mac n cheese, Spaghetti Bol. You get the picture.
In Spoleto ,in the Perugia district, we were treated to spaghetti that tasted like something my palate had never experienced. Soft, fresh, a melt-in-your-mouth taste experience. To be recommended. And as for the seafood marinara. Well combine Italian seafood with their own spaghetti or fettuccine and you have a plate or bowl of fare sent from heaven.
Of course, the noteworthy local beer and wines were a great “wash it down” addition to our weeks of tasting and loving Italy’s divine gourmet food.
®Mytravelroom recommends Italian food from;
- Umbria – picked fresh from the bush roadside blackberries eaten every morning on our walk. Antipasto platters for lunch, wild boar for dinner.
- Rome – pizza, pizza, and more pizza, and of course coffee, (in the morning) Beer and wine into the wee small hours
- Florence – Good restaurants are the ones run by families. You may need to book. Otherwise, a casual pizza or pasta in the Piazza del Duomo while you gaze spellbound at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
Accommodation for our trip was booked with Booking.com.
