What to Eat in Basilicata: A Guide to Lucanian Flavours

Lucanian cuisine grew out of a farming tradition built on simple ingredients, seasonality, and zero waste. It’s a cuisine that surprises first-time visitors, with bold flavours and dishes you won’t easily find anywhere else in Italy. Here’s what not to miss during a stay in Basilicata.

Bread and fresh pasta

Pane di Matera IGP is probably the region’s best-known product: a crunchy crust, soft crumb, and a tall, recognisable shape. Among the fresh pastas, strascinati — hand-shaped and hollowed with three or four fingers — are often served with sausage cooked in Aglianico wine, cardoncelli mushrooms, and smoked provola cheese. Also worth trying is cialledda, a humble dish of stale bread, onion, potato, local herbs, and eggs.

The crispy pepper, the region’s true star

If there’s one ingredient that symbolises Basilicata, it’s the peperone crusco di Senise IGP: a sweet pepper dried in the sun for 15 to 20 days, then strung into long garlands called “serte.” Farming families once hung them in windows as ornaments as much as preserved food. Crispy and slightly sweet, it accompanies first courses, mains, and even eggs or legumes.

Cured meats, meat dishes, and cheeses

Among the cured meats, lucanica di Cancellara sausage and salame pezzente, a Slow Food-protected product from the Matera mountains, stand out. Baccalà alla lucana, salt cod dressed with crispy peppers, is a classic for festive occasions, alongside agnello alla contadina, lamb baked with potatoes. Among the cheeses, caciocavallo podolico, Pecorino di Filiano DOP, and Pecorino di Moliterno (Canestrato IGP) speak to a shepherding tradition that’s still very much alive.

The wine: Aglianico del Vulture

Aglianico del Vulture is the region’s signature red wine, grown on the volcanic soils around Mount Vulture. Intense and structured, it pairs perfectly with the meat dishes and aged cheeses of Lucanian tradition.

Sweets

Simple and understated, like all Lucanian pastry: anginetti, glazed ring-shaped biscuits, and cannaricoli, made with flour, oil (or lard), and lemon juice, often close out a Sunday lunch. On festive days, crispe — discs of fried leavened dough — are dipped in honey or sugar. A few kilometres from Nova Siri, the village of Rotondella is home to the sospiro, a sponge cake filled with cream and coated in glaze, often decorated with a chocolate spiral: the exact recipe remains a secret kept by local pastry makers.

These are flavours you’ll come across easily during a stay in the area, moving between Nova Siri, Matera, and the nearby villages.