Easy to entice Pino to the Balanzano (near Perugia) sagra: snails were the headliner second course dish at this Sagra dell’Ortolano (“Food festival of the vegetable gardener”). Pino relished those snails (bruschetta miste, first, though!) while I enjoyed the vegetable-theme dishes – grilled vegetables and baked vegetables au gratin – and grilled lamb chops, too.…
On the feast of Corpus Domini (60 days after Easter), kaleidoscopic floral tapestries carpet the piazzas of Spello (this year, seventy masterpieces) and not only: narrow floral masterpieces run along the winding medieval alleyways like elegant table runners, flowered ones (but these flowers are real). On the morning of the Infiorate festival, you’ll want to…
If you’re eager to taste the best in Umbrian local cuisine, head to a sagra, a ten-day village festival where local volunteers team up to cook up buonissimi regional specialties. From late spring to late fall, our “eating out” is practically speaking only at sagras. And I suggest two rules for paramount sagra enjoyment: get…
“Because there’s no better way to eat the goodness of Umbria than at a sagra,” Renato replied with a smile when I asked why he and his wife, Graziella, were eating here at the Sagra della Birra e dello Stinco (“food festival of beer and pork shank”). This Roman couple had headed to Umbria for…
Italians are known for opening home and hearts to visitors and at the end of May, wine cellars all over Italy throw open cantina doors to welcome visitors into their cellars and vineyards, uncorking bottles of crisp whites and robust reds for the thousands joining in on the festival, Cantine Aperte (“Open Cellars”). Launched in…
Fried foods might not be prevalent in the Mediterranean diet, but they’re definitely present… and you’ll find “il fritto” (or derivatives) in a few Italian idiomatic expressions, too: – “siamo fritti”, “we’re fried” means “we’re in trouble” – “mandare a farsi friggere” is best translated as “send someone off to fry themselves” i.e., ” tell…
This May in Assisi, La Parte de Sotto (“Lower Assisi”) won our four-day medieval festival, Calendimaggio, in a smashing tripletta victory over La Parte de Sopra (“Upper Assisi”: Sopra took home il Palio (the victory banner) for the third year in a row. And this May, I conquered my own “tripletta”: in late May, I…