T
he hottest place in Italy that sweltering
August night was our train carriage. It
was crowded, of course, on Ferragosto,
the annual holiday celebrating the
Assumption of the Virgin Mary and
the start of the Italian summer-holiday
season. We were heading south overnight from Rome to
Salento, the sun-bleached region in Puglia that forms
the stiletto on the Italian boot, and anywhere else in
the world the windows would be open on such a night.
But not here. A draft on a sweaty neck causes colpo
di vento, or a stiff neck, which Italians avoid at all costs,
even in August. So by the time Giampiero and I arrived
in Salento after nine hours in a sealed carriage, we
were thirsty and dishevelled.
His father picked us up at the station in Lecce,
the capital of Salento, in his four-wheel drive and we
headed to a café for freshly baked pastries and coffee
with almond milk. Risking a colpo di vento, we sat
near open windows with a warm, fig-scented breeze
wafting in. Giampiero’s father, a psychologist, wore
a gold watch and an expensive suit, but he was also
an inveterate forager, equally at home in the pasture as
the office. In the next week he rarely drove more than
a kilometre without pulling over to pluck a dozen figs
from a stranger’s field or some prickly pears from a
cluster of cacti – how did he do that with bare hands?
When we went to the beach he dived for sea urchins,
slicing them open with a curved blade to extract
the roe. At the lunch or dinner table he’d diligently
peel the fruit he’d stolen, distributing plump figs or
prickly pears to everyone at the table before heading
to the freezer for a bottle of Petrus, a digestivo that
concluded every meal.
Giampi’s dad sort of sums up Salento and the
Salentini for me: undeniably elegant, but with
a wild edge, a reverence for communal meals, and
an insatiable appetite for local flavours. This was my
impression of Salento on that first holiday 12 years
ago with my now former boyfriend, and it’s one that’s
confirmed with every visit. I’ve made a habit of
returning at least once a year, especially in summerwhen hot days are cooled by breezes carrying the
sweet scent of ripening fruit.
Salento lies at the southernmost tip of the long
coastal peninsula of Puglia, at the confluence of
the Adriatic and the Ionian seas. Hot and dry, it’s
known for its olive groves, forest-clad plateaus and
towns embellished with intricately carved stone
façades. The region’s proximity to Greece and the
Balkans has made it coveted territory since classical
antiquity. The Mycenaean Greeks were followed by
the Romans, then a long line of invaders: Lombards,
Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, Swabians, Angevins,
Turks and Venetians. They all left their mark, much
of it at the table, and this makes shopping for food
and dining in the towns and villages of Salento
something of an adventure in time travel. Even now
Salento isn’t home to just one culture; the interior,
for instance, is inhabited by the Griko, who speak
a dialect more closely related to Byzantine Greek
than Italian or Salentinu.PREVIOUS PAGE
La Grotta della
Poesia, north of
Torre dell’Orso in
Puglia’s Salento
region. Above:
Sant’Oronzo,
Lecce’s patron
saint, overlooks
the city.Southern^ ItalyReggio CalabriaNaplesLecceBrindisi
SalentoPugliaBasilicataCampaniaCalabria152 GOURMET TRAVELLER