Vacation Highlight Reel: Puglia

A recap of my trip to Lecce, Monopoli, and beyond

Greetings eaters and readers! As promised, today’s dispatch is all about my trip to Puglia, where I spent the week with a dozen intrepid Dinner: A Love Story readers on a Via Rosa tour through the region (in the “heel” of Italy’s boot) renowned for its olive oil, burrata, orecchiette; its Negroamaro and Primitivo wines; its seafood, its capicola; its coastlines and Baroque cities and old port towns; its majestic basilicas and medieval frescos. We cooked, we lunched, we spritzed on rooftops and in trattorias, and we dipped our toes into both the Ionian and the Adriatic Seas. The trip was curated by Via Rosa’s Elizabeth Minchilli and her daughter, Sophie Minchilli, and officially guided by the charismatic Angelo Calianno, who grew up in Cisternino, about half way between Bari and Brindisi. Throughout the week he passed the baton to locals who have lived and breathed Apulia their whole lives. I’m not permitted to divulge the entire itinerary, which officially belongs to Via Rosa, but here’s a taste of where we stayed, what we did, and of course, what we ate…