My private Italy: In Umbria, eat like an “Umbro”

I have a confession to make. Of all the regions I travel through for work, Umbria is the one I say yes to fastest. And the reason is not only the landscapes, although they are beautiful. It is the people, and, I admit it, the food.

Umbrians have a warmth that is hard to explain until you feel it. The owner of a small trattoria who comes to your table to ask, very seriously, whether you liked the lentils. The lady in the olive mill who insists you taste the new oil “just one more time”, on one more slice of bread. The butcher in Norcia who spends ten minutes explaining a salami while a queue forms behind you, and nobody in the queue complains, because they are listening too. Here you are never treated like a tourist for long. By the second day, you are simply a guest.

Umbria is the only Italian region with neither a coastline nor a border with another country. It sits right in the middle of the peninsula, wrapped in hills, oak woods and olive groves, which is why Italians call it “il cuore verde d’Italia”, the green heart of Italy.

Even its name invites a story, and there are many to choose from. Historians will tell you, correctly, that it comes from the Umbri, the ancient people who lived here before Rome. But the explanation I like best, and the one you will often hear from locals, is the simplest: that Umbria comes from the Latin umbra, “shade”, for the dense forests and the dark, deep valleys of the Apennines that still cover so much of the region.

Umbrian cuisine is exactly like its people: no grand court recipes, no complicated sauces, no kitchen theatre. Umbrian food was born in farmhouses, under the old sharecropping system called mezzadria, where families cooked with what the land, the woods and the family pig could offer. The ingredients are few and the techniques are simple: the wood fire, the grill, the spit, a generous pour of green olive oil.

Let me take you along the small roads I love most.

Norcia and the “art” of the Pig

We have to start in Norcia because Norcia gave Italy an entire profession. For centuries its men travelled every winter across central Italy, especially to Rome, to slaughter and cure pigs for other families, so famously that in Italian a pork butcher’s shop is still called a norcineria, and a butcher a norcino, wherever you are.

Walk down Norcia’s main street and the smell of cured meat will reach you before the shop windows do. Look for Prosciutto di Norcia IGP, the capocollo, the Easter salami called corallina. Norcia was badly hit by the 2016 earthquakes and is still rebuilding with remarkable determination; buying from its shops is one of the most concrete ways to help. And yes, this is also black truffle country: I have told that story in His Majesty, the Truffle.

Everywhere in Umbria you will also meet the porchetta: a whole pig, boned, seasoned with wild fennel, garlic, rosemary and plenty of black pepper, then roasted slowly on a spit or in a wood oven until the skin becomes a crunchy golden shell. Sliced and stuffed into a plain bread roll at a market stall, it is the most satisfying lunch in central Italy, and one I never manage to resist: every time I pass a porchetta van, I tell myself I will just look. I never just look.

Lentils, spelt and the tresures of the Plateau

Above Norcia, at more than 1,300 metres, lies one of the most breathtaking landscapes in Italy: the Piano Grande of Castelluccio, a vast high plateau surrounded by the Sibillini mountains. Between late May and early July, the lentil fields burst into flower in the famous fiorita, a patchwork of yellow, red, blue and violet that looks as if someone had spilled a painter’s palette across the valley.

Those fields produce the Lenticchia di Castelluccio di Norcia IGP, tiny, thin-skinned lentils that need no soaking and hold their shape when cooked. They are served in a simple soup, with sausages, or, on New Year’s Eve, with cotechino as a wish for prosperity. Nearby grow the ancient spelt of Monteleone di Spoleto DOP, the rare saffron of Cascia and the roveja, a wild pea saved from extinction by a Slow Food Presidium.

Liquid Gold: Umbrian Olive Oil

Umbria’s olive groves climb the hills between Assisi, Spello, Trevi and Spoleto, often right up to the town walls. The result is one of Italy’s finest extra virgin olive oils, protected as Umbria DOP: intensely green, fruity, with that peppery kick that tells you it is fresh.

If you travel here between late October and December, you will witness the harvest and the pressing in the local frantoi, the mills, and you will taste the one dish Umbrians wait for all year: a slice of toasted bread rubbed with garlic, a pinch of salt, and a stream of new oil straight from the press. They call it bruschetta, you may call it the best thing you ever ate on a piece of bread. For me, it tastes like Umbrian hospitality: nobody at a frantoio ever lets you leave without it.

Strangozzi, Torta al Testo and the Pasta of the poor

Umbria’s pasta is rustic and handmade, usually made with just flour and water. The most famous are strangozzi (or stringozzi), thick, square-cut strands typical of Spoleto and Foligno. The name probably comes from stringhe, the leather laces of old shoes, but locals love to tell a darker story: that the pasta recalls the cords once used by rebels against the Papal tax collectors. They are served alla spoletina, with a spicy tomato sauce, or with black truffle.

Then there is Perugia’s great street food, the torta al testo: a flat bread cooked on the testo, a heavy disc that was once made of stone and is now cast iron, then cut open and filled with sautéed greens and sausage, or with prosciutto and cheese. Near Gubbio it is called crescia. Add grilled meats, wood pigeon alla ghiotta and trout from the Nera, and you have a cuisine that is honest, earthy and deeply satisfying.

Sweet Perugia, from Baci to Torcolo

Perugia has a sweet tooth. In 1907 a small confectionery company opened here, called Perugina. In 1922 one of its founders, Luisa Spagnoli, had the idea of using the crumbs of hazelnuts left over from production to create a new chocolate, crowned with a whole hazelnut. She wanted to call it Cazzotto, “punch”, because of its shape. Fortunately someone convinced her to choose a more romantic name: Bacio, “kiss”, and every Bacio still comes wrapped with a little love note. Every autumn, Perugia celebrates chocolate with Eurochocolate, one of the largest chocolate festivals in Europe.

Each season has its own sweet: the ring-shaped torcolo di San Costanzo for Perugia’s patron saint in January, the red and white ciaramicola at Easter, the rocciata of Foligno, a spiral of pastry filled with apples, nuts and raisins.

Sagrantino and Orvieto Classico, the wines you don’t expect

Umbria’s great red comes from the hill town of Montefalco, “the balcony of Umbria”. Sagrantino di Montefalco DOCG is made from a grape that grows almost nowhere else in the world and is among the richest in tannins of any known variety: dark, powerful, built to age. For centuries it was made only as a sweet passito for religious feasts, a version that still exists and is wonderful with aged pecorino.

To the south-west, the town of Orvieto stands on a cliff of volcanic tuff riddled with caves and cellars dug by the Etruscans. Its white wine, Orvieto DOC, was loved by popes and painters alike, and legend has it that Signorelli asked to be paid partly in wine while frescoing the cathedral.

Three Addresses to taste Umbrian Cuisine

Osteria a Priori – In the heart of Perugia’s historic centre, this osteria is a manifesto of Umbrian produce: lentils from Castelluccio, red potatoes from Colfiorito, onions from Cannara, black truffle from Norcia, Chianina beef and cheeses from small local farms.

L’Alchimista – A family affair on the main square of Montefalco, the Morettis, offering handmade strangozzi, saffron from Cascia, seasonal vegetables from the family garden, and a wine list devoted to Sagrantino.

Le Grotte del Funaro – Carved into the tuff cliff, these caves were first dug by the Etruscans and later used by a rope maker, the funaro who gave the restaurant its name. Today they host homemade pasta, grilled meats and Chianina beef. Eating deep inside the rock on which Orvieto stands is an experience you will not forget.

Umbria never tries to impress you at first sight. It waits. Then, one day, you find yourself on a terrace in Montefalco with a glass of Sagrantino, or in a mill near Trevi watching green oil pour from the press, or on the Piano Grande in July surrounded by flowering lentils, and someone you met only an hour ago is already telling you where to eat tomorrow and making you promise to come back. That is the moment you realise the green heart of Italy has quietly taken yours. It took mine a long time ago, and every time I go back, it feels a little more like coming home.