Caffe Mediterraneo in Conversano · May 3, 09:58 AM by James Martin
Conversano is a very nice town in Puglia near Bari with one of those fantastic, sprawling castles that got a tower or two added to it every time a conquering horde passed through. Inside is a very important set of paintings you must see.
We spent the morning exploring Conversano with journalist Rosalia Chiarappa of am apulia magazine, who lamented the lack of open restaurants on the day we decided to visit. In the end, she took us to the Caffe Mediterraneo, a place she hangs out after work. Casual. Built into a modern apartment complex on the edge of town, not where you’d expect to eat a fine meal.
You see, you walk into the Cafe Mediterraneo through a typical pasticceria arrangement. Sweets. Piles of them. Blech. I wanted a glass of wine and something salty to eat.
Cleverly concealed behind the rows of refrigerators holding all manner of tooth-decay-producing dolce were tables set for lunch. Surprise!
So we sat down and had that glass of wine and some nibbles. There was pasta with mussels, cozze, available so Rosalia and I ordered them. There they are on the right. They look, well, a bit normal.
But oh my! They were good. Unbelievably good. After praising the preparation and the care taken in cleaning the mussels I looked up at Rosalia and said something I’d come to regret, “these are made the way I like my shellfish and pasta, in a sauce enhanced with butter!”
She looked at me like I was nuts. You know I am, of course, but she, up to this time, had been polite enough to ignore the troubling signs. Now she couldn’t avoid them. “They don’t use butter.”
“But,” I said, pausing quite a while because I knew, of course, that the kitchen wouldn’t dare use butter; this is olive oil country and the oil has come so incredibly far from the semi-dreck produced 30 years ago—but still I continued, whining really, “it’s all rich and everything, it’s gotta have butter!”
So we asked the waitress. I don’t think she had ever heard of butter.
So I admit it—I was wrong. It was oil. It surprises you. Olive oil here in Puglia is not that sewing machine lubricant you get at the Safeway, it’s real food that has a character and flavor to die for. It certainly took to my steamed mussels quite nicely.
So that’s my tale. If you’re in town, visit the restaurant. Expect simple food prepared with good ingredients. If you have shellfish, drink the local wine made to go with it: Verdeca. There’s a picture of a very good example of it up there. Click to see it at a reasonable size. It’s got a beautiful label.
Caffe’ Mediterraneo
2011 | Via San Giacomo, 14 70014 Conversano (BA)
Tel/Fax 080 4959121
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Caffe Mediterraneo in Conversano originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com May 03, 2012, © James Martin, 
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The Whistles of Rutigliano · May 2, 09:36 AM by James Martin
Rutigliano. You’ve probably never heard of it. Rutigliano is a village near Bari in Puglia that has always been a village devoted to pottery; its name derives from “Rutilius”, the reddish color of the local clay. It has become very famous indeed these days for its artisanal terracotta whistles. They’re not just little whistles you give to kids. Art is involved. Adult themes, satirical elements, toilet humor, hens…all involved. I’ve sprinkled this post with representative whistle pictures so you don’t think I’m just blowing smoke.
I’ve even included a picture of one of the local whistle producers about to blow a whistle over there on the left. That’s so you can see that no matter how intricate, how enormous, or even how complex the whistle is, there’s always this little nipple in the back of it that you blow on and sound comes out. Them’s the rules.
(By the way, if you want to buy a whistle, Mr. Samarelli has some rather nice and inexpensive ones in his shop in Rutigliano on Via Noicattaro, 245. See: Terracotte Samarelli)
The little Museo del Fischietto in Terracotta is found inside the library in Palazzo San Domenico in Rutigliano. You can go in there and see if they’ll open it up for you, but you might have to call. If you get in, it’s worth it. Trust me on this. There are rows and rows of little plexiglass cases full of whistles. The cases are designed to make photography interesting.
Carabinieri, priests (and large breasted women confessing their sins), as well as political figures are the most represented amongst the satirical whistles. Seeing Silvio Berlusconi rising up out of a toilet bowl creates little incentive to wrap your lips around the little nipple in back so you can blow the whistle on him. Or perhaps they’ve all been blown already. We suspect he has.
Whistles have, of course, been around for tens of thousands of years. According to tradition, the terracotta clay whistle is believed to be a message of love, a symbol of fertility. It is believed to bring good luck and to have the power of chasing away negative energies and the evil eye. It’s got a lot of responsibility in a world gone mad.
The best way to visit the Whistle Museum of Ritigliano? Well, you can go to the library and see if they’ll open it, or you can stay at a nearby bed and breakfast where they’ll call and arrange a visit for you.
(There is another museum devoted to whistles, the Museo dei Cuchi in Cesuna di Roana near Vicenza. Cuchi is just a variation on the word for whistle.)
By the way, you can click any of the pictures above to see them bigger. If you want.
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The Whistles of Rutigliano originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com May 02, 2012, © James Martin,
Restoration Sexy · May 2, 06:29 AM by James Martin
If you’re like me, you go absolutely giddy when you hear of something you’d like to see in it’s original state being “restored.” I felt that pit-of-the-stomach tickle when I read of 4.5 million euros being freed up to the restoring of 33 Romanesque churches in Portugal and Spain.
Then it hit me. What? This:
Ok, so the church needed a wider door. So let’s chip away at that really cool bit of ancient art. Let’s not look for alternatives, a hammer and chisel is always faster.
So maybe “restoration” isn’t really something one should wish for. What we’d like is resurrection—things to come back the way they were only cleaner and with decent roofs.
Then I started reflecting on all the European restorations I’d witnessed. Even in simple places of lodging, it was hard to look back upon 30 years of staying somewhere in Europe without thinking, “You know what? I’ve stayed at country houses, farms, apartments and hotels grand and not, and yet very few of them, in fact nearly zero of them, looked like the places where I’d seen people living.” Few were even “homey.”
Generally, folks “restore” most tourist things to look like something they’d put in one of those designer magazines named something like Tuscany Style for the 1%. It’s a fake of something someone’s thought of after buying a hulk and painting a bit: “hey, that would make a great fake old Tuscan room!” And so they sponge paint on some fake, sun-faded walls, lay in some rustic designer tile, put up some fake wood beams and bingo! The tourists will never know—but it’s sexy. And that counts oh, so very much. And you get a lot of money for a room. Bingo. Sexy!
It’s like they do with women in fashion magazines. It turns out men are attracted to women with long legs. After all, you’ve probably never heard of a construction worker who shouts out, “look at the stubby gams on that one!”
See, God, in her infinite wisdom, made women’s legs longest at puberty, after which time the body grows more than the legs. So, to get you to buy the purple eyeliner, all the pics of beautiful women are altered in Photoshop to stretch the model’s legs—all because it would be a bit too much to advertise something sexy using a real 11 year old. And what does this “restoration” of mature flesh do? It “makes” you buy the eyeliner thinking it’ll make you as sexy as the model. Most of the time. Every once in a while it seems to force women into eating disorders, if you believe in the veracity of the lawsuits flying into courts these days.
Sexy. We’re stuck on the concept of it. But what about comfortable? Authentic?
So then I saw this:
This is the dining room at Tenuta Pinto, a Bed and Breakfast country house nearing the end of its restoration period, located just outside of Moli di Bari in Puglia. I was shown it by Dominico Pinto and his wife Isa, who are very enthusiastic about the project and determined not to alter the footprint of the place. That’s why this dining room is here. They couldn’t bring themselves to gut the 1792 villa and install a rabbit-warren of little tourist rooms that had the Tuscan influence everyone seems to crave. So the upper story is how it was only better. It’s a sympathetic restoration that allows for a suite of rooms that reflect the age and dignity of the original place.
Outside there is a huge garden and rows of table grapes, from which the Pinto family has made a living for many years.
It’s nice when someone has the sense to turn aside the frantic huffing and puffing of sexy for the long, slow sigh of longing and remembrance. I like that. It’s like when you were a kid and you first went into the strange, shadowy place inhabited by your grandparents and ran your fingers over the strangely colored photographs in their ancient frames and everything was so quiet you thought you could hear your heart beat.
And then, of course, mom came up to you and slapped your hand for touching stuff and that was that.
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Restoration Sexy originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com May 02, 2012, © James Martin,
Popular These Days
Giovinazzo and The Octopus Slappers · Apr 25, 11:52 PM by James Martin
Giovinazzo is a small, seaside village north of Bari. It has a very long history and was once home to all the major monastic orders. In spring, outside of holidays, it transforms itself into the little fishing village tourists never seem to come across any more but yearn for.
Each morning I head out to spend time with the other old geezers who watch the tiny wooden fishing boats ease into the little harbor with their catch. Just around the corner are what I call the octopus slappers, the divers who bang their catch against the rocks to tenderize it before it’‘s sold. The acrid smell of fuel, the sharp slap of octupus on the rocks, the pealing of church bells in the distance, the men greeting each other—that is my morning. it’s a simple morning like the food. It’s all the goodness of the sea-bounty, you just have to know how not to wreck it.
Giovinazzo has been very nice to me. Go, but go in spring or fall for this experience; summer is a madhouse they tell me.
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Giovinazzo and The Octopus Slappers originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Apr 25, 2012, © James Martin,
Sunset, Giovinazzo in Puglia · Apr 24, 11:42 AM by James Martin
Wine on the rooftop: Nero di Troia
rough velvet on the tongue,
the wine of dark seas
then the crack of toasted almond shell,
Mandorle Mollesi Tostate “al sale”
while swallows swoop an dive,
some salame piccante and scamorza laid out on butcher paper,
then taralle,
then this
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Sunset, Giovinazzo in Puglia originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Apr 24, 2012, © James Martin,
Puglia Travel Guide · Aug 26, 09:22 AM by James Martin
Puglia has the right combination of grit and greatness; nobody is likely to mistake Puglia for a spit-polished Disneyland project, there aren’t enough tourists to warrant such hideous treatment. Puglia is a long way from Tuscany, a long way from the Renaissance, a long way from the glorious excess of a fat Tuscan beefsteak. Yet the carefully calculated and lushly sculpted curves of the southern Baroque carved into the soft surfaces of native rock is enough to captivate your eye, especially in the glittering sunlight, and the platters of seafood served up at modest, rickety-table trattorie laid out along the sea will more than keep the food-motivated traveler’s hunger at bay without breaking the bank.
There is a lot of coast in Puglia, and save for the spur of the boot, the Gargano promontory, the land is flat and walkable—or bikeable.
Fish aren’t the only thing you’ll find to eat here; this land has been famous for vegetables forever. The weather in the Gargano allows for two harvests of its famous agrumi, the citrus fruit that finds its way into much of the cooking in these parts. And the olive oil production, once structured for cheap blending oils, has been improved greatly, and the focus is on quality oils that are stunningly good.
If you like American Zinfandel, you’ll love similar characteristics in Primitivo di Mandura. You can even visit a museum and get a jug of it filled from a pump to take back to your vacation apartment if you wish.
And you don’t have to stay in a boring vacation apartment; even the housing and farms of Puglia express a unique architecture. The huge family farms called Masserie , sometimes fortified against coastal pirates, are being converted to apartments and hotels for discerning tourists—at a price almost any tourist can afford.
How do you access all this? Where can you stay in a Trullo, the little beehive houses concentrated around Alberobello that everyone knows? Where can you stay in a Masseria apartment and take classes in stained glass? Where can get the real scoop on the local foods?
Well, it’s all in Martha’s app: Puglia Travel Guide – Sutromedia.com, just updated to be compatible with the latest technology in iOS 5.
And the Puglia Travel Guide is now ready for your Android device!
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Puglia Travel Guide originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Aug 26, 2011, © James Martin,
The Electric Rodi Garganico · Jun 8, 01:47 PM by James Martin
One of the things I most enjoy about wandering around Italy is getting out in the evening and joining the collective walk called the La Passeggiata. The hot sun has almost set the shadows are long and mysterious, and things you don’t notice in the light of mid day snap into focus.
Like the electricity they charge you an arm and a leg for. Notice the care they have taken to make sure it’s all in place. Neatly.
Walk, have a gelato (in this case at the Gelateria Ognissanti (dal 1985), and enjoy the Seaside town of Rodi Garganico. Don’t worry about the electricity, it will be there in the morning. Unless it’s not.
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The Electric Rodi Garganico originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jun 08, 2011, © James Martin,
Romantic Puglia: Vico del Gargano · May 7, 03:30 PM by James Martin
I may be the wrong person to ask about romantic destinations, but what if I found you a town that features a “kissing alley” called Vicolo del Bacio (and another called Vicolo Veloce—for the men I suppose), has as its patron saint St. Valentine, and every summer celebrates the Vico Love Fest?
In addition, there is probably one of Italy’s most loved bar/pasticcerie right on the main drag.
Vico del Gargano; remember the town’s name. It’s in Puglia.
One of the endearing things about the south of Italy is that the conservative religious community kept love in check (or thought they did) until fairly recent times and just now we outsiders are hearing the clever ways in which the “virginity forever” crowd was defeated.
Vico, you see, had quite a few narrow alleys like the one in the picture. Let’s say that you and your sweet honey wanted to kiss and to rub your bodies together lasciviously—in public, because that was your only choice. Well, what if you picked a narrow alleyway and pretended to be passing in one direction at the exact same time as your little pumpkin happened to be passing in the other? Sure, you had to brush up against each other. And if you were face to face it stands to reason that your moist and yielding lips might, if one leaned in a bit to keep the cobwebs from brushing one’s collar, come together. And if two people puckered?
But Pico del Gargano’s romantic allure doesn’t end a narrow alley named Vicolo del Bacio. There are romantic places to eat and drink in Vico del Gargano. My choice would be in the dramatically lit Il Trappeto, an old coooperative olive mil in which the tables are the ancient grinding stones (covered in glass) you see in the picture, set in front of the oil extraction machinery. And Il Trappeto isn’t just a gimmick restaurant, the food is excellent. The food is traditional, the lighting dramatic, and the owner eager to please.
You can even stay at an “Eco” B&B in Vico Del Gargano, and have breakfast every morning in one of Puglia’s (and Italy’s) most famous bars—the Bar Pasticceria Pizzicato is justly famous for just about anything you can put in your mouth. Giuseppe Romondia is your host, and he speaks English expertly.
And finally, you can attend the Vico Love Fest in July and enjoy live music and, of course, food.
Take your valentine to Vico del Gargano if you want an unusual but interesting vacation. Rent an apartment like this, it’s part of the Pizzicato EcO B&B, a sort of “albergo diffuso,” a quartet of apartments around town that have been recently restored for tourist bliss. Imagine a kitchen and great views for the price of a hotel room. And you don’t have to fix breakfast every morning, you just stroll over to the Pizzicato and have it. It comes with the apartment.
And just in case you need more incentive to visit this land, Vico del Gargano is one of I Borghi Piu Bella d’Italia and it’s la città dell’Amore.
And you’ve never heard of it, right? The allure of Italy doesn’t stop outside the city limits of Florence, Venice and Rome you know.
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Romantic Puglia: Vico del Gargano originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com May 07, 2011, © James Martin,