Kiwi Roaming

I’ll write two blog about our time in Bari – this one on the food! Yum.

We arrived mid-Afternoon on Monday 22nd of June and desperately needed to eat after our flight. Steve scouted out Vintage Cafe online which was one block from our apartment. A cute wee place with seating on the street where we were offered “toast” aka a toasted sandwich, “due” ordered along with my first Aperol spritz in Italy and a beer for Steve. You maybe wondering why I haven’t had an Aperol before now. Well when we were in Italy 2 years ago I was paying no more than €3 for any kind of spritz, the Greek islands were slightly more expensive, then last year in Spain and Portugal a wine was under €2 so I stuck with that instead. On Sardinia the Spritz started at €8 and went upwards from here. Vintage Cafe was €5 so I decided to get over myself and order one.

Other than the smokers sitting alongside us we really enjoyed our “toast” and drinks but it was just so hot outside so we returned to our room for showers and a change before heading out around 7pm – or when the restaurants started to open.

Our room is about 25 minutes walk from the old town. To get there our walk took us down a very very long pedestrian precinct with fancy shops like Gucci, Pravda and YSL. We had book marked on the map the wee streets where the Nonna’s sit outside their homes and make pasta by hand, drying it on racks and bagging it for the tourists to purchase. To be frank we were surprised at just how many Nonna’s there are doing this, some had wee shops, others just a table with their pasta bags. They weren’t sitting alone for the most part, their friends and families were also sitting in close proximity. There were often men in the same street selling beers out of their kitchens as well. Fascinating way to make a living.

After winding through the narrow pedestrianised streets we emerged in a piazza next to the castle wall. Ready for something to drink we stopped at a cafe to watch the sunset and ordered another two Aperol spritz plus a plain focaccia to share – which turned out to be the first stop in our food crawl for the evening. Focaccia is a big deal in Bari and they are very proud of this style of bread.

We returned to the rabbit warren of narrow residential streets and emerged in a busy piazza with restaurants and here we saw people sitting eating pizza under the trees. A few minutes further on we found a queue to join which turned out to be for the pizza place. Turns out this pizza is called Focaccia Barese and it’s a speciality of the region. The whole queuing place was an experience, we got to the front and said “uno per favore” with no real idea what we were ordering, the man disappeared into the back and returned with one pizza, cut and bagged it, handed it to his colleague who said “5” – this yummy yummy treat only cost us €5, awesome. Demolished under a tree back in the piazza wishing we had bought ourselves drinks while we were in the pizza shop as well. Yum.

More wandering and we decided it was time for gelato, we’d spotted people sitting on the wall beside the castle moat eating some so wandered back past more Nonna’s (it was after 9pm now) where were queued again for amazing gelato. I got two scoops – pistachio and chocolate, Steve got lemon and stracciatella.

Our breakfasts have been from various bakeries nearby. We also went to a specialist brunch place for avocado and eggs on toast – pricey but something I was craving.

Walking Food Tour

We had already booked ourselves on a sunset walking food tour with a local guide. It started at 6:30pm on the pier of Saint Nicholas. The other 3 people in the tour group were a kiwi who lives in Melbourne and a couple from Sydney so we all got on like a house on fire making the guide think we were a group of friends together.

First stop – snacks and prosecco / beers. Nothing remarkable but a good opportunity to chat and get to know each other, and for our guide to tell us more about the area we were exploring which is beside the fishing port. From here we walked to another spot where we had a cone of calamari each. There were people sitting on benches, on their own camp chairs, on walls – everywhere out in the streets. Being near the port there was a lovely breeze and we enjoyed sitting outside eating our calamari.

Our third stop – was a specialist focaccia place. Here we had the choice of many different toppings. Steve chose potato and sausage and I chose Cicoria, a local chicory green that kinda tastes like spinach. Both were delicious but the dining setting was in a diner and not outdoors so not that interesting.

Our final stop was about 8pm and in a specialist dessert restaurant where we all had two scoops of gelato in a cup. With only 10 flavours it was a very different experience to the previous night when we were overwhelmed with options. The gelato was perfectly nice but not wow.

Was the food tour worth it? at $70NZD maybe, we consumed $40 worth of food / drink, and our guide explained lots of history including how St Nicholas’ bones were stolen to be interned here – along with other interesting titbits.

It was great to meet others travelling the region from down under so a pleasant evening out.