Salento street food: the dishes to try

Your holiday in the Salento, the heel of Italy’s boot, is close, and soon you will be strolling late into the evening through the lanes of its white towns. In summer these places come alive: they light up for the local feast, fill with people from everywhere, with colourful night markets and folk music playing in the squares. And in that warm, festive setting there are always the stalls selling local street food. In the Salento the urge to go out into the street is strong, and you could say it is part of who the people here are. They love the evening stroll with something good to eat in hand, and many of these foods have made Salento cooking famous well beyond this corner of Puglia. Every occasion, religious feasts included, turns into an excuse to head for the food stalls and try something local. So here is what to eat as you wander around the Salento.

The rustico leccese

Of all the street food of the Salento, the rustico leccese is one of the favourites, visitors included. You rarely find it outside the Salento, so try it while you can. It is a disc of puff pastry with a heart of mozzarella, béchamel sauce and tomato. Hot, stringy with melted cheese and just salty enough, it is the perfect aperitivo, the snack Italians have before dinner.

The fried calzone

The fried calzone is copied and imitated all over Italy, where it often goes by the name of panzerotto. Beware of the misunderstanding, though: in the Salento a panzerotto is something else, a long, thin potato croquette. The calzone is at its best straight out of the fryer, but be careful, because the inside is very hot indeed. It is filled with tomato and mozzarella and wins everybody over.

The frisa

The frisa is a classic of the Salento summer. A few simple ingredients and a frisa, and the simplest, most irresistible supper in the world is ready. It is half a ring-shaped loaf, baked twice until it is bone dry, which you dip quickly in water to soften it and then dress as you like. Usually you rub a ripe tomato over the surface, add olive oil and salt, and eat. But that is only the start: on a frisa you can pile vegetables preserved in oil or grilled, rocket, herbs, more tomatoes, tuna, capers and anything else you fancy. There is more about this bread that lasts all summer in our piece on the frisella.

La Terra di Puglia sells frise from the Salento online, baked by hand and locally, and much loved by the Salentini themselves. Order some and throw your own frisa party.

The puccia

This is the street sandwich of the Salento, street food in its purest form. The puccia is a low, wide bread roll with almost no soft crumb inside, its dough very close to pizza dough. You fill it with whatever you like: cured meats, cheeses, the inevitable Apulian vegetables and much more.

The puccia salentina is also on sale in our online shop of Apulian specialities: buy one and fill it however your imagination tells you.

Seasoned olives

At the day markets and the night markets you will always find seasoned olives, and very good they are. The Salento is a land of olive trees and olives: take the chance to buy a few, to nibble as you walk or to take home for a recipe with an Apulian accent.

Snails, an unusual street food

Snails, too, are often treated as street food here, so much so that every year in the Salento, at Cannole to be exact, there is a snail festival. It is a sagra, one of the village food festivals that fill the Italian summer, held in August: under the stars you eat Salento snails cooked in all sorts of ways. One for the connoisseurs.

Scapece

From the old seafaring tradition comes scapece, a mix of breadcrumbs, saffron and anchovies in vinegar, bold both in colour and in flavour. Try it: you will certainly find it at a village feast, religious or otherwise.

The pasticciotto

We end this tour of Salento street food on a sweet note, with one of the great symbols of the Salento kitchen: the pasticciotto. It is a little casket of shortcrust pastry with a delicious custard inside. Simple goodness, and so special that in the Salento Lecce and Galatina both claim to have invented it. Whoever is right, you cannot go home without having tried a real pasticciotto.

That is the end of our tour of the street foods you really must try on a holiday in the Salento.