BEST FOOD IN THE SOUTH OF ITALY 🇮🇹 (Puglia Italy Food Tour)

Good morning from Bari, Italy, a city that's been called the gateway to the southern part of Italy and the capital of Puglia. Today we were on a mission to try all the local and traditional foods. There is literally hundreds of southern Italian dishes to choose from and they're incredibly region-specific. So to start this culinary adventure we actually have to rewind to the oldest city in Europe. We have come to Matera which is a town that has been continuously inhabited since 7000 BC. It is incredible, it's one-of-a-kind old town. We've come here because it's the only place we're going to that's going to get into the Basilicata region rather than the Puglia region. The things that we have to get here are very very specific. This region historically a little bit poorer. They've got what they call peasant dishes which are more simplified dishes. I think they're coming back around now though because they look and taste incredible. We're trying the strascanate today which is fresh pasta, local pepper that's been dried in the sun and ground up and then breadcrumbs on the top. That is like fresh homemade pasta in this really simple but amazing sauce and the breadcrumbs are fried so they're adding just this nice little crunch and there's a slight heat from the pepper. I think this would be a perfect pasta dish, like you're going to love this. If you could make your dream pasta dish this is it. This we saw online is one of the more traditional ones as well for this region in Basilicata, the cavatelli. It's effectively fresh pasta, it's got the pork, the fennel, the mushrooms in a tomato sauce. It looks incredible, different sort of pasta than I've ever had before. It's got kind of like the consistency of a gnocchi. I don't know if that's blasphemous saying that but it smells really good. I'm very excited to try. That is great. I love that you can really tell that it's homemade pasta. They're all different shapes and sizes, lengths, widths. So good, so authentic. This is the pork. That's great too and again tiny little bit of spice in there. Really good. Both of these dishes embody what we've heard this region's ideas of food are, which is really simple ingredients done really really well. So everything is super fresh and probably super local and it's just cooked to perfection. The next thing we're trying isn't even in the city. We'll see you in Toronto. For our next traditional Italian food we jumped on a bus and drove an hour and a half south to a little town called Taranto. Not a very well known town but it has actually been around since 700 BC and was actually founded by the Spartans, all of which we're ignoring today. We're going here for the food and the food alone. Because we are back in the Puglia region there is a lot of different choice for us to go for. We've decided to dedicate Taranto to the smaller snack street food. So our first stop today is trying to find the best, I forgot the name, Italian panzerotti. Panzerotti is actually one of the oldest forms of street food in Italy. Essentially a baker had some leftover dough, shoved it full with the tomato sauce and cheese, folded it over into a half moon, baked it up and we got a panzerotti. It smells amazing. The place we went to sells them in the flame, which is like the Taranto sort of way to do it, basically in the oven and fried, which must be super popular because they basically had them all lined up ready to go. We got one with ham and cheese and one with just cheese. I was 100% expecting sort of like a pizza dough vibe, but that is corn dog outside. So Jordan's going to absolutely love that. It is super airy and fluffy and it has a nice crunch to it as well. I haven't gotten any cheese yet. Oh my gosh. Now that is more pizza flavor. That tomato sauce and cheese combo definitely makes it more pizzery, but then it does have that sweetness that a corn dog coating sort of has. I think you're going to absolutely love that one. So this one was freshly baked, still really, really hot. I am so excited for it. I don't know how it's going to be different, but it's certainly not corn dog. It definitely looks more pizzery. The bread is incredible. I haven't got anything else yet. Messy rip time. Wow. The ham and cheese in there is incredible. Cheese like lava. I love it. It definitely tastes more like a pizza than the first bite I had. Very much like a calzone. I don't want to start fights about it, but is it just a calzone? What's the difference? I don't know. It's amazing. So we have a running list of best foods we've had the entire time we've been traveling. So 214 days, four continents, 20 something countries, and that fried panzerotti jumped right up the list. I think it's equal second. Equal with the Serbian cevapi, just behind Vietnamese calao. This list is, it's getting crazy. Sticking with the themes of snack foods, the next thing we're getting is like a traditional street food sandwich from Italy. It's called a Puccia, I think. For our second thing in Toronto, we have Puccia. It's essentially like an Italian sandwich. So again, I'm pretty sure a baker came up with this when they had leftover dough. They cut it down the middle and you can get whatever you want on it. It was kind of like Italian subway. Like you go through, you tell them what they want. He cut the meat fresh. He didn't have a couple of fingertips. So I think maybe he had a few accidents previously on the cutting machine. The bread was cooked fresh as well. They chucked it in the oven and it rose so beautifully. I went for ham, mozzarella, arugula, and artichoke. And Jordan has hot salami, mozzarella, arugula, and sun-dried tomatoes. It's known as the anything goes sandwich because you can chuck on whatever you want. Anything goes. I've even seen that some places do them with fries on the inside, which would be so good because how do you beat a chip buddy? It's amazing. That is amazing. It is like the dough is a pizza dough essentially. So it's like a little bit of pizza dough puffed up, cut in half, and then all of these delicious ingredients shoved in. The mozzarella is so fresh. The ham as well. And the arugula just cuts through a little bit. I really, really like this. I feel like this would be up there for Italian street foods for me because you could make it whatever you want. So one day you feel like hot salami, you can get that. The next day you don't want any meat. That's fine. Have veggies. I love it. Mine one does look very Italian. You've got green, red, white in like a pizza bread. That's so Italian. When he got the mozzarella out, it just, it looks so weird mozzarella to me, but I love it. I'm so excited for this. The bread is amazing. It's like a pizza dough, which you'd expect to be quite thick, but because they've puffed up one piece and then sliced through the middle, it's so light and fluffy. They say that the thing that makes it a puccia is the arbitrary combination of different ingredients. And I think we've succeeded. After Toronto, we grabbed a bus here to Bari. It is the biggest city that we've been to so far and does come with a lot of choice. If you don't get distracted by this food maze that we're about to enter, we should get to try scagliosi, which is like a polenta snack dish. The most traditional Southern Italian pasta, but first we're trying to make that we have attempted to make ourselves pretty unsuccessfully. And experience. It's very rush, rush, rush in there. Not rude, but just like they don't really care. They don't really care, but I think that's how you know, it's good. Yeah. Like polite, not caring. Yeah. Not like, yeah, they weren't being mean about anything. They were just, they had things to do and that's fine. Puccia is super popular. Basically all through Italy. We wanted to wait until we were in Bari to try it because that was the oldest bakery in Bari. And in 2019 was voted to have the best Puccia in all of Italy. Olives. Yeah. Olives. She means kind of like a pizza slice. That is amazing. So like light and fluffy, but rich from the tomatoes back in 2020, when everyone was going a bit stir crazy at home, we've gotten weirdly into making Puccia every weekend. And I will say that it's kind of easy to make, but hard to perfect. And this is way better than anything we ever made. It was like the perfect amount of greasy and the tomatoes just add this little pop of flavor. We never added anything to ours. It's so good. So good. Really bad at describing things, but the dough is like fluffy and bouncy, but the base is really crispy. So you get that really nice crunch. Oh, I love it. I actually love it. And it only cost two Euro. I could live off these. They'll fill you up for ages. This is so cool. We've heard for a real authentic, traditional meal, you have to come to Strada Orchetti and basically out on the street, all of the to eat. We couldn't really figure out if the Nonna's were cooking yet. It was really cool to see them making all of the Orchetti on the street, but we're getting hungry. So I think we're just going to go find a restaurant. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's so nice. To be honest, we came to the first restaurant we've seen, but it seems like it's a good decision because we've got some Perali, which looks like a local biscuity type thing and an olive. Don't these look like the things we tried in Lecce? What is that? Oh, I know what it is. Tastes like a soya crisp. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's what it is. Salute. Our Orchetti is on the way. Thank you. Wow. Orchetti literally means little ears and they are, they're shaped like little ears, which I think is great because you can scoop up all the goodness. So it does come in a lot of different flavors as all pasta does. The traditional way is supposed to be with turnips, not a big fan of turnips. And I've been craving carbonara for a long time. So I got the carbonara version and it looks and smells incredible. It's really, really good. Oh, that's so good. That feels like something I didn't know I was craving for so long. What's your taste like? Oh my God. The pasta is cooked perfectly al dente and that sauce is so rich and meaty. It's like a perfect ragu. It tastes like it's been simmering for hours. Tomatoey but savory. I feel like I get what you mean. Like it's exactly what I've wanted for so long without even realizing that I wanted it. Cause it's like transporting me back to being at home and eating mum's pasta. Cooked with love. I was definitely the winner in that one. If you come here, get the orecchiette bolognese. It is amazing. Potentially the best pasta I have had in all of Italy. I feel like that's quite high praise. That's true. I feel so cozy and homey now. Next, we're going to try and find the scagliotti, which we tried to get for lunch, but they're not open till six. If they're still not serving for whatever reason, we're going to try and come back tomorrow. Oh, deep fried goodness. There was literally a woman with her doors open, just a massive pot of oil, frying all this sliced up polenta. I didn't even order. We were just standing there. She handed me the bag and took the money. It looks like they've been served with a sprinkle of salt. They are super fresh. She literally just pulled them out. Wow. Oh, so hot. We tried polenta back in Romania, I think it was, but this is the way to do it. Deep fried, crunchy, salty goodness. It's really nice. I think I just like it because it's crunchy and salty. And that's a wrap on foods we wanted to try in Southern Italy. Time to go home and pop a bottle of wine.