For the last leg of our Italy trip, Julian and I parted ways – amicably of course. He had signed up for a self-guided biking tour around the heel of the boot of Italy (Puglia), while I did a small group tour of the same area focused on wine and food. He will write a blog post about his experience, and we’ll let our readers decide which one of us chose best.
I first read about Espressino Travel in the Vancouver Sun. That’s because Lili and Robert, the co-owners of the travel company and our tour guides, hail from Vancouver. Back when they “didn’t know what (they) were doing,” (or so Robert said), they paid for writers from the Vancouver Sun and the Province to take the tour.
Robert told a story in that article which stuck with me. He said that he and Lili were travelling around Puglia a little more than ten years ago when they walked into a small pizza joint in the baroque town of Lecce, Pizza and Co. Robert ordered a pizza, and, to his surprise, the owner said “No.” He explained that this was an old-fashioned pizza that no one eats anymore so he wouldn’t make it. Lili and the owner exchanged glances and burst out laughing. They were “siblings of another mother” – soulmates.
Lili went to the University of Salento in Lecce to improve her Italian, which she had learned as a student.
While they were in Lecce, she and Robert collected a group of friends like the pizza joint owner, Maurizio. Together, they gradually developed a plan to introduce the food and wine of Puglia to the world. Their tours, which they offer a handful of times a year to no more than 12 people at a time, are sold out a year in advance. They haven’t yet conquered the world, but there was a solid showing from the Seattle-Vancouver area in my group.
The people Lili and Robert have collected over the years have fascinating stories. I will tell two that made the biggest impression on me.
Maurizio grew up in Naples in a wealthy family. When he was a young man, his family lost their wealth. Twenty-five years ago, he came to Lecce seeking an opportunity that would allow him to support his family, both parents and siblings. Lecce was small and under-touristed at the time, except by Italians who visited in August for their beach vacation. A pizza parlour seemed the perfect business. Although he knew nothing about making pizza, Maurizio set out to create the perfect pizza. He still hasn’t accomplished that goal; the perfect pizza is tomorrow’s pizza, he told us, during our pizza-making class. Still, his are pretty close to perfect.
Maurizio doesn’t speak much English, so his class was almost entirely translated by Lili, except for the occasional “Basta!” (“Stop!” as we put the wrong toppings on our individual pizzas). His kind and joyful disposition shone through the language barrier. He is a small, neat man who wears a grey fedora and jokes constantly – except when he is talking about Maradona, the Argentinian soccer player who put Naples on the soccer map 25 years ago. (Our pizza lesson involved a diversion from an hour-long discussion of flour to Maradona. Not that the topics are related). Maurizio loves a hug. And every time he fed us, he read us a poem which Lili translated. The poems are about life and how to find meaning in living. Sometimes they brought Lili to tears. Maurizio is one of a kind. I won’t divulge his pizza secrets – you must take the tour for that information – but suffice to say that we have been making pizza all wrong, from the dough to the sauce to the toppings.
I took Julian to Pizza and Co for our last meal in Lecce after our tours concluded. The parlour has a small counter at which the customers stand and being Italy, a handful of tables outside. Julian went in to order from Maurizio who is always present when pizza is being made. Julian managed to convey that I had taken the tour. “Ah, Lili, Robert!” Maurizio exclaimed. “What pizza do you want?” Julian suggested that he choose. He made us the most amazing garlic-parmesan pizza I have ever tasted.
The other stand out storyteller was Donato, the owner of Masseria Le Stanzie near Supersano. Donato also doesn’t speak English. While he doesn’t have Maurizio’s vibrant personality, his story moved many of us to tears. At about the same age as Maurizio, he and a few friends decided to buy land in the area to farm. Their elders thought they were crazy. They told them they were going backwards, becoming peasants again, when they should go to university and get good jobs. Like most young men, they didn’t listen to their parents. They found the only piece of land they could afford. The soil was exhausted and the abandoned farmstead littered with garbage. The masseria had once been an overnight stop on the route transporting olive oil to the coast for export. Extra virgin olive oil wasn’t a thing then; the oil was used to light lamps. Then electricity replaced oil lamps, and the masseria owners went bust.
After many years of hard work, Donato and his friends hadn’t made much progress rehabilitating the farm. It was taking everything from Donato, he said, his friends, his family, his money. He was broke, and on the verge of giving up. But the stone walls of the masseria spoke to him. He heard them tell him that if he didn’t give up, she (he thinks of her as a she) would provide for him and his family.
Donato had heard that the masseria next door was offering farm-to-table meals. Like Maurizio, he didn’t know anything about running a restaurant, but he thought it was an idea with potential. He and his family set up a few tables and chairs, ready to offer their home cooking, but no one came. One day, a car pulled up. They thought, “Finally!” The driver asked if he could park at Donato’s masseria because the parking lot next door was full. Sighing, Donato said, “Sure.” Seeing their tables, the driver promised, “Next time we will come to your restaurant.” And they did.
Today, the beautifully restored farmhouse has a small restaurant. Objects that Donato has found while rehabilitating the farm fill the rooms of the masseria. Every year, the restaurant gets a little smaller as he takes out tables to return the objects to their place. He has great respect for the farmhouse and understands that he is only its current keeper in a long line of keepers.
The farmhouse has a history that dates from ancient times. Donato showed us the basement where, in the off-season, fishermen came “to earn a piece of bread” for their families. They worked for months in the bowels of the then-monastery, hand-pressing olives to make oil. Because olive oil was valuable, pirates and thieves would try to steal it, so the monks sealed up the workers in the basement room. The men laboured, ate, and slept there, along with the donkeys or mules needed to work the presses, until all the olives were pressed. I can think of no better image for the poverty that this region has historically endured.
We began each day at an intimate, elegant hotel in Lecce, Mantatelure, which is only big enough to accommodate the tour group. We took our breakfast of fresh pastries, cheeses, meats and sweet cakes, and of course coffee, in the walled garden.
Then we were transported to a town or venue, sometimes to hear about wine or food production, sometimes to cook, but always to eat.
We saw olive trees that had been planted by the Romans and ate in the garden at the olive farm.
We helped make fresh mozzarella and burrata.
We saw a lot of Baroque churches, which were built with the proceeds of the flourishing olive oil trade.
We even ran into Julian one morning while he was pedalling to the town of Galatina to see another Baroque church. Our encounter was especially amusing because some of the people on my tour met Julian before his tour started. They were intrigued that we had gone our separate ways and a little concerned that he was cycling the Puglian countryside alone. Every morning they asked if I’d heard from him and if he was doing okay. Whenever we saw cyclists on the road, for a joke someone would sing out: “Look, there’s Julian!” So, when someone called out, “Look, there’s Julian!” in Galatina, the rest of us thought she was kidding.
Most of all, we ate a lot of food. And a lot of gelato.
And all the wine and coffee, both hot and cold — including the special coffee of Lecce which is called espressino — that we could drink. I couldn’t keep up. Someone much bigger than me would do a better job!
My taste of Puglia tour taught me to love rosato (rose, although my cooking school trip to Gascony helped with that), and to appreciate the simple foods associated with the “cucina povera” (peasant food) of Puglia. But what really remains is the memory of the people, both those introduced to us by Lili and Robert, and those who participated in the tour. To say nothing of those five pounds I gained in six days.
