The thought of a vacation in Umbria scared me at first. It was that "The green heart of Italy" thing. In America's green heart, you see, even the farmers have pretty much bought into the myth that just about everything you put in your mouth is bad for you except engineered industrial crap food. So, oddly enough, you have a hard time get anything decently edible in the area of the world's most fertile soil unless someone brings you something from their garden. Heck, they're mostly making biofuels now instead of good eats.
But Umbria is different. They have wine for one thing. Good wine. And where you have wine, good food is bound to follow, and in Umbria it does. Sure, Tuscany gets all the applause for its wine and cuisine, but there are four Umbrian wine roads. Why, you could rent a villa and set out each day to visit all sorts of wineries and drink wines you've maybe never heard of, like Sagranitino from the slopes around the town of Montefalco. Here are the roads:
There is little on the web about Umbrian cooking. I find it a bit more interesting than Tuscan cuisine, but maybe only because it's different. Instead of Tusany's white beans, Umbria has very tasty lentils. If Tuscan cuisine is "cucina povera" the cooking of the poor, then Umbrian cooking seems to take the concept further; the food is earthier. Dishes with black truffle, another Umbrian specialty, are numerous in Umbrian restaurants.
Umbria is the only landlocked region of Italy, so don't expect a lot of seafood. Sausage is wonderful in Umbria, in the fall, there's lots of game. Priests are made fun of in Umbria through the primi piatti. Strozzapreti is a hand-rolled pasta whose name translates into "priest choker". Yes, the greedy priests of old would likely have choked on them when they wolfed down the fine dish--in Umbria Stozzapreti (or strangolapreti "strangled priests") become a form of gnocchi or dumpling.
If you're tired of the crowds and large towns of Tuscany--come to Umbria. It's only a short drive away, but a much more rural and laid-back environment. It's not like you haven't heard of Umbria's larger towns: Assisi, Spello, Spoleto, Todi and Perugia are all Umbrian and worth visiting.
The picture above is of the Eturscan walls and gate of Perugia, the capital of Umbria. |
