“The shrimp heads just looked too juicy to ignore,” says Halo Perez-Gallardo, chef-owner and creative director of Lil’ Deb’s Oasis in Hudson, New York. They had just added a fresh shrimp ceviche to the menu and were considering tossing the discarded heads and shells into their usual shrimp-infused butter, but these had a higher calling: the fryer. Perez-Gallardo, who is always looking for creative ways to cull flavor from ingredients that might otherwise get tossed, felt inspired by the popular drinking snacks of East Asia—little morsels packed with salty umami that long to be washed down with a cold beverage. An impromptu batter dredge and deep-fry transformed the shrimpy bits into an alluringly crispy, aromatic app that immediately landed on the menu. While the dish disappeared just as fast—a flash in the pan that stuck around only as long as the ceviche—Perez-Gallardo’s timeless technique is one worth trying at home.

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Trivia time: What’s the most consumed spirit worldwide? If you guessed vodka, rum, or gin, give it another shot—it’s baijiu, China’s favorite liquor.

A lifetime of visiting the country of my ancestors has taught me that gatherings there often mean one thing: swigging, swirling, and spilling generous quantities of baijiu. For centuries, people have been crowding around tables and knocking back the grain-distilled alcohol at family reunions, business dinners, holiday celebrations—and average Thursday nights. “It’s so ingrained in the culture that I took it for granted,” says SAVEUR contributing editor Jessie YuChen, who grew up in Taiwan.

Yet globally, the spirit remains obscure: For most of my life, I hardly saw it outside of China and Taiwan, and even today, the vast majority of the world’s baijiu is produced and consumed in these two places.

But lately, unbeknownst to many, baijiu has sprung its borders—and is shedding its reputation as a staid beverage best enjoyed neat. Today, more and more bartenders around the United States are seeking out the spirit and turning it on its head: infusing it with botanicals, stirring it into juice, lacing it with tinctures, and shaking it with ice. By thinking outside the realm of shots, they’re turning a new generation of drinkers into baijiu devotees.

What is baijiu?

Baijiu is a clear alcohol made by fermenting grains (usually sorghum) with jiuqu (aka qu), a dried, grain-based starter culture that’s been used for millennia. Jiuqu’s microorganisms (such as yeasts and molds) convert the grains’ starches into alcohol, resulting in “more distinctive flavors than you find in many spirits,” explains Derek Sandhaus, author of Baijiu: The Essential Guide to Chinese Spirits and co-founder of baijiu brand Ming River. The end result often exceeds 110 proof.

Ernest Lesmana, bar manager at Sumiao Hunan Kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, describes the beverage as “a clear alcohol that has the complexity of a dark liquor.” Much like whiskey or rum, baijiu isn’t just one thing—it’s an umbrella term for a spectrum of styles, which are divided into four primary aroma categories. Different regions produce remarkably divergent flavor profiles: One bottle may remind you of floral sake, while another might be savory with soy-sauce notes.

The four big aromas

Rice-aroma baijiu is distilled from rice grains using rice-based qu. With its clean finish and mild, floral flavor, “it’s probably the best way to jumpstart your baijiu journey,” Lesmana notes. Historic distillery Guilin Sanhua produces a popular version.

Light-aroma baijiu, made from a mash of sorghum and either pea-and-barley or wheat-bran qu, is typically fermented in stone vessels, yielding a spirit with melon and dried-fruit notes. Red Star Erguotou, Fenjiu, and Kinmen Kaoliang are a few household names that create this affordable style.

Strong-aroma baijiu, largely produced in Sichuan Province, dominates the Chinese market. Fermentation in clay pits, sometimes for decades, gives this style overripe-pineapple notes. Luzhou Laojiao, one of the oldest continuously operating distilleries in China, still maintains use of its 16th-century pits.

Sauce-aroma baijiu is pure umami, with woodsy mushroom notes. Several rounds of fermentation and distillation, coupled with aging, make bottles like Kweichow Moutai fetch thousands. “It’s like dark soy sauce coating your mouth and makes you want to eat more,” says Lesmana.

An intro to imbibing

First, make sure there’s plenty to eat—we’re talking high ABVs here. Next, keep in mind that communal baijiu-drinking is a ritual, at least in much of China and Taiwan: Traditionally, every willing adult at the table receives a shot glass not much larger than a thimble. After each pour, there’s a toast to at least one other person at the gathering, then everyone takes the shot simultaneously. “Reciprocity is expected, so watch your pace,” Sandhaus cautions, as it’s not uncommon to knock back 30 or 40 shots during a single dinner. (As kids, both YuChen and I would giggle on the sidelines while our respective, otherwise serious elders got progressively tipsier.) “If you consent to the drinking session by joining in a toast, you’re in for the long haul,” Sandhaus adds.

Because baijiu is a work-dinner staple in China, growing up I always thought of it as an old person’s beverage. Years later, living in Beijing, I grudgingly went through the motions when it came time to take shots. It wasn’t until a few years ago when I had my first baijiu cocktail that I began to see the spirit in a new light.

Recipe: Perpetual Motion

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From shots to spritzes

Converging forces are propelling the baijiu revolution: immigration, tourism, innovative Chinese restaurants, and a global frenzy over all things fermented, to name a few. Nick Lappen, founder of the former Boston Baijiu Bar pop-up, says the liquor is currently where mezcal was a decade or two ago: “If you tried to tell bar managers that the fastest growing category of spirits today would be an at-the-time relatively unknown agave distillate from a few specific regions of Mexico, most wouldn’t have taken you seriously.”

My own aha moment happened in the 2010s, when I started seeing “baijiu bars” pop up in Asia and the U.S. I couldn’t believe the cocktails I was sipping—swirled with juices, syrups, and enlivening Asian herbs and spices—were built on the spirit that had made me crinkle my nose my whole life. It didn’t hurt that the drinks were often served in cozy, dimly lit digs decorated tastefully with Chinese motifs. At the New York City speakeasy Lumos, there were baijiu sesame coladas sweetened with mangosteen juice; Capital Spirits in Beijing blended baijiu and passionfruit syrup into Sichuan slings. But those early entrants were only the beginning.

Recipe: The Last Emperor

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When Haoran Chen (born in China’s Guangdong Province and later raised in New York) dreamed up his Queens bar 929, he knew a baijiu creation belonged on the menu. After immigrating to the U.S. as a child, Chen “started to treasure” things that reminded him of home, he says. The Last Emperor, flavored with umeshu (Japanese plum wine) and spiked with the Taiwan-made light-aroma baijiu Kinmen Kaoliang, is YuChen’s regular order. “There’s a sense of pride in knowing this is from our home, and now we get to drink it here,” says YuChen.

Baijiu is entering the mixology mainstream, but the question remains: Why? Zoe Burgess, author of The Cocktail Cabinet: the Art, Science and Pleasure of Mixing the Perfect Drink, suspects the answer lies in the trendiness of terroir, as well as jiuqu’s ability to create highly local expressions in flavor and style. Then there’s the rise of regional Chinese restaurants and cookbooks that incorporate the spirit as an ingredient—even if it’s not always an easy sell. “Mixing baijiu into a cocktail” is the gateway, according to Tina Heath-Schuttenberg, co-founder of Kwei Fei, a Sichuan restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina that also offers baijiu flights.

Shake and swirl your own

If you find yourself with a bottle of baijiu that has slightly sweet undertones (like a rice-aroma variety), Lappen recommends reaching for rich, rounded flavors such as coconut, hazelnut, or chocolate. On the other hand, stone fruits and aromatic herbs can amplify the overripe-fruit notes of strong-aroma style baijiu. For those deeply funky bottles, try working in dark, earthy notes like coffee or soy sauce.

The mixer is your friend. A water-based beverage such as seltzer or tea helps temper the high ABV, Burgess notes. According to YuChen, earthy pu’er and floral Taiwanese high-mountain oolong are two teas that pair especially well with baijiu.

Recipe: Baijiu Chuhai

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But of all the flavor pairings, citrus is perhaps the most unbeatable, says Lily Wang, co-owner of Chicago cocktail joint Nine Bar. “You need acid to balance out the bold flavor,” she explains. Her Baijiu Chuhai, inspired by Japanese shochu highballs, blends lemon juice and Calpico, a yogurty Japanese soft drink.

Many bartenders in the U.S. work with the widely available Ming River, a sub-brand of the historic Chinese distillery Luzhou Laojiao meant for mixing. But any baijiu can bring a compelling depth of flavor to a cocktail. The bottom line: Experiment. “People shouldn’t be afraid to try a few different bottles,” says YuChen, “because each one tastes different.”

With additional reporting by Jessie YuChen.

More Baijiu Recipes

9 Baijiu Cocktail Recipes You’ll Want to Make on Repeat

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Stir-Fried Shacha Lamb Noodles

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The post Baijiu, the World’s Most Popular Spirit, Is Coming for Your Cocktail appeared first on Saveur.

Queens, New York bar 929’s twist on a whiskey sour swaps out bourbon for Kinmen Kaoliang, a Taiwan-made light-aroma baijiu. In keeping with the bar’s theme of Mandarin and Cantonese pop music, the drink’s name nods to Hong Kong singer Anita Mui’s 1988 hit “Drunk in Dreams Together,” which samples the theme song of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 film “The Last Emperor.” To make this baijiu cocktail recipe, 929 founder Haoran Chen quickly infuses baijiu with tea leaves using a sous vide machine, but we found that letting the two ingredients steep slowly at room temperature also works nicely. 

Featured in “Baijiu, the World’s Most Popular Spirit, Is Coming for Your Cocktail” by Megan Zhang.

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The beverage team at Cambridge, Massachusetts restaurant Sumiao Hunan Kitchen uses strong-aroma baijiu to make this refreshing baijiu smash cocktail recipe. This category of baijiu, which includes brands like Ming River and Mianzhu Daqu, lends a pineapple scent and hint of umami to this mixed drink, while blood orange purée lends a pleasantly bitter base note.

Featured in “Baijiu, the World’s Most Popular Spirit, Is Coming for Your Cocktail” by Megan Zhang.

The post Perpetual Motion appeared first on Saveur.

At the Chicago cocktail joint Nine Bar, co-owner Lily Wang and beverage director Joe Briglio drew inspiration from Japanese chuhai (shochu highballs) and melon cream soda to create this light, zingy mixed drink with a baijiu base. Wang likes to use Ming River, a liquor produced by the historic distillery Luzhou Laojiao, for its pineapple undertones.

Featured in “Baijiu, the World’s Most Popular Spirit, Is Coming for Your Cocktail” by Megan Zhang.

The post Baijiu Chuhai appeared first on Saveur.

Strolling the aisles of your local Goodwill, you might pause at a shelf piled with old porcelain plates decorated with flowers, vines, and bucolic scenery. These affordable dishes—known as transferware—were invented for the emerging middle class in 18th-century England. Inspired by hand-painted Chinese porcelain but stamped by machine, then exported by the shipload, English transferware became the go-to dish for early American households. 

Transferware’s earthenware base material (sometimes substituted for ironstone, porcelain, or bone china) kept the dishes highly affordable, but their printed-on monochrome designs—featuring castles, courting couples, and other intricate scenes—looked anything but. The technique lives on today, both in pricey, collectible Limoges porcelain from France, as well as in lower-grade plastic servingware that’s suddenly in vogue.

Across the United States, well-known chefs are now reviving transferware, swapping minimalist white dishes for Southern Willow Blue, English Chippendale, Historic American Brown, and other vintage designs. There’s a comfort to these old dishes, which conjure up meals in grandparents’ homes. These days, far from feeling formal or stuffy, the quaint motifs encourage a more relaxed dining experience. Here are the restaurants at the forefront of the transferware renaissance. What’s old is new again.

Gift Horse

272 Westminster St., Providence, RI

Before opening this groovy raw bar, chef-owner Benjamin Sukle (of Oberlin restaurant fame) dove into 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s dinnerware designs to match the new restaurant’s “timeless, brash style.” Rosebud Chintz from Spode was a winner, and eBay and Etsy got the job done. “Every time I have an empty plate in front of me, I can’t help but turn it over to see who made it, what collection it’s from, and how old it is,” says Sulke, a self-proclaimed “lifelong plate flipper.”

Get the look:
Royal Albert Rose Confetti 5-Piece Bone China Place Setting
Villeroy & Boch Audun Ferme Dinner Plate
Gracie China Rose Chintz Porcelain 8-Inch Dessert Plate

Hermosa

4356 W. Armitage Ave., Chicago, IL

Ethan Lim’s modern Cambodian restaurant (named after its neighborhood) pays homage to his late mother, Momma Lim, who ran a noodle stand in pre-war Battambang. With the COVID-19 pandemic in the rearview, Lim “wanted to focus on creating a space where time stood still and the service style was reflective of being at home,” a philosophy that shines through in such touches as his partner’s grandmother’s English Chippendale plates—on which he serves Dungeness crab and caviar.

Get the look:
Royal Albert Old Country Roses 10.25-Inch Dinner Plate
Portmeirion Botanic Garden Dinner Plates
Loki Dessert Plates by Matthew Williamson

Mister Mao

4501 Tchoupitoulas St., New Orleans, LA

At her maximalist “tropical roadhouse,” chef-owner Sophina Uong swaps starched tablecloths and matching plates for a hodgepodge of colorful transferware. “I know it drives our cooks and servers crazy, because nothing matches and things are impossible to stack together neatly, but to me, that’s the beauty of recycling pieces of history,” she says. Menu standouts include avocado chaat and turmeric-potato pani puri.

Get the look:
Bitossi Vintage-Inspired Floral Dinnerware
Gien Les Depareillees Rebus Dinner Plate
Spode Woodland Turkey Dinnerware

Chubby Fish

252 Coming St., Charleston, SC

Housed in a defunct corner store, James London’s dock-to-table restaurant sprinkles in deep blue transferware to complement the casual, nautical feel. “We try not to take ourselves too seriously,” says London, referring to dishes featuring tuna belly toast and caviar sandwiches served on mismatched china. “Guests get excited when they see plates or glasses they grew up with, and often bring us boxes of plates from their garage that they think will work with our lineup,” he says.

Get the look:
Spode Blue Italian 16-Piece Set
222 Fifth Adelaide Woodland 16-Piece Dinnerware Set
Williams-Sonoma English Floral Dinnerware Collection

Troubadour Bread & Bistro

381 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg, CA

Boulangerie by day, bistro by night, Troubadour Bread & Bistro’s whimsical aesthetic shines through in the escargot and tartiflette served on gold-rimmed Limoges, a transferware subset popular in 19th-century France. “I love that each piece has a story, and that we get to give these plates a proper stage,” says co-owner Sean McGaughey.

Get the look:
Famille Rose Dinner Plates
RHODE Dinner Plate Sets
Noritake Hertford 12-Piece Set

Ma Der Lao Kitchen

1634 N. Blackwelder Ave., Suite 102, Oklahoma City, OK

The shatterproof melamine dishes at this brother-and-sister-owned Lao restaurant are a nod to the duo’s childhood. “I want patrons to feel like they’re at my mom’s house,” says co-owner Jeff Chanchaleune, who serves mugifuji pork katsu and nam khao on the same plastic, floral-rimmed plates he ate from growing up.

Get the look:
Siren Song Floral Print Melamine Plates
Tarhong Cottage Blue Floral Melamine Dinnerware
Sandia Melamine Dinnerware Set

Oma’s Hideaway

3131 SE Division St., Portland, OR

To create a restaurant that existed “outside the space-time continuum,” the co-owners of this Singapore and Malaysian hawker-inspired eatery leaned into bold, clashing patterns and ornate details such as lustrous fabrics, thrifted floral transferware, and a ’70s-esque iridescent snakeskin bar top.

Get the look:
Bitossi Bel Paese Fruit Accent Plate
Sur La Table Italian Blue Floral Salad Plate
Abi Dessert Plates

The post The Restaurant Design Trend We Can’t Get Enough Of appeared first on Saveur.

At the back of a butchery in the town of Martina Franca, Riccardo Ponte claps his massive, baseball-mitt hands, calloused from years of charcoal burns and judo holds, and presents the next plate. Tender chunks of veal lung wrapped in sinister layers of pork fat form a glistening pyramid on the table. “Pugliese chewing gum,” he says with a grin, before retreating back to his grill, a central fixture of his shop, called Mang e Citt, or “Sit Down and Eat” in Pugliese slang. Most of the macellerias—butchers that double as informal restaurants—have, out of convenience, moved to standard-issue flat-top grills in recent years. Ponte’s setup, however, is somewhere between a pizza oven and a hearth, a kind of infernal cubby hole carved directly into the wall of his small fluorescent-lit shop. Stacks of meat balance precariously on skewers; coals, dispersed in various piles, create heat zones measured purely by feel. Ponte insists that this technique, established centuries ago by the butchers of Martina Franca, makes all the difference: “You can taste the process,” he says. 

I had come to Puglia—the gleaming, postcard-ready wedge of Southern Italy that sticks into the Ionian Sea like a boot heel—to eat. This, I recognize, is not a very original quest: Elizabeth Gilbert has been there, Stanley Tucci has done that. Spend enough time digging through guide books and suggested itineraries, and you’d be excused for thinking the only thing in Italy to do is eat.

When we travel to eat, though, we’re often looking for a story—a tale to bring back home, or a clear, easy-to-digest version of a place that fits squarely in our own mental atlases: The ruby red aperitivo glistening in the Tuscan sun, the trapizzino held aloft on the Spanish Steps, the pale green scoop of pistachio gelato, doled out in a Sicilian alleyway. Or, in Ponte’s case, the small-town, larger-than-life chef, seemingly grief-stricken by your physical inability to accept “just one more” piece of grilled meat.

It’s easy to arrive in a place like Puglia with pre-conceptions about Southern Italy: a hot, quiet place, where things move slowly and naps are plentiful. But I quickly learned that for every person doing something one way, there is someone else doing the very same thing—for the very same reasons—a completely different way. As one meal bled into the next, I found that every time I built a story out of the meals I ate and the people I met, every time I thought I had found some definitive sense of what Puglia actually tastes like, it quickly fell away.

While I wish I could take credit for stumbling upon Ponte’s establishment, I was part of a tour group traveling through the region. Roads and Kingdoms, an online travel magazine, has, in recent years, pivoted toward offering small-group, food-centric trips around the world. Trips like the one I took to Puglia are focused not on big-name restaurants, but on offering a backstage pass to show travelers how the actual sausage gets made, drawing on what co-founder Nathan Thornburgh describes as “an archipelago of interesting people.” 

If it all sounds vaguely Bourdainian, that’s not a coincidence. Founded in 2012 by Thornburgh and food writer Matt Goulding, the company and its journalism was for many years supported and funded by Anthony Bourdain. Today, Roads and Kingdoms’ trips actively try to avoid what Thornburgh refers to as “following the umbrella across the piazza.” Potential guests must undergo an interview process to make sure they’re a good fit for the group: Fighting couples and Michelin star-hunters have been turned away in the past. 

Roads and Kingdoms’ shift toward this kind of “don’t-call-it-a-group-trip group trip” is indicative of a wider trend in travel, one in which access is everything. Whether helmed by chefs, academics, or journalists, experiences are being gently curated in a way that feels uniquely yours as they lodge themselves into your memory. Serendipity, by definition, can’t be manufactured. Oftentimes, the best partner to the unexpected is time—slow down and stretch out a trip and you’re bound to meet the characters and have the conversations that end up solidifying the travel experience in your mind. That’s harder on an organized tour, but, as these experiences seem to posit, not impossible.

The interesting person leading us on this particular trip was Eugenio Signoroni, one of Italy’s most celebrated food writers, as well as the editor of the hotly contested “Osterie d’Italia” guidebooks from Slow Food International’s publishing house, which list and review the best traditional restaurants across Italy. On day one, as golden hour sets in at the masseria, or farmhouse, that would serve as our base, Signoroni explains that this is a trip to shatter preconceptions, not confirm them. “You know the stories of the nonna, the Italian grandma and her amazing cooking?” he asks. “I want you to know it’s a total myth: My daughter’s grandmother doesn’t know how to cook a damn thing.” It was a good line for a tour built on this kind of punk-rock premise, but in talking to him afterwards, it became clear that the sentiment behind it is true.

“We like to build up this romantic idea of tradition,” Signoroni says when I ask what he notices when talking to first-time visitors to Italy. “It makes us feel safer and more comfortable.” Four years prior, when I visited Puglia for the first time, I had felt a kind of self-satisfied contentment: Sipping wine and watching a blacksmith working on new horseshoes for the stallions he kept behind his shop, the memory fits squarely into the romantic. “If we want to really understand a place,” Signoroni says, “we have to see it as it is, not as we think it should be.” 

That doesn’t mean you won’t find intergenerational recipes and deep-seated heritage in Puglia. This is a place fiercely proud of its traditions, themselves a mishmash of the steady wave of conquerors who came to this land over millennia. It’s a pride that has been reinforced by recent history too, borne from decades of being looked down upon by the rest of the country. Long one of the poorest regions in Italy, Puglia was left behind by the industrialization that took hold in the north. As a result of a largely subsistence economy, cucina povera—literally “poor kitchen”—is the backbone of Pugliese cuisine. It’s only in recent years, as Puglia has marketed itself as a global destination, that the culinary label has been wielded not with shame, but with a kind of reclaimed dignity. 

At Cibus, a family-run restaurant tucked away in a labyrinth of climbing alleyways in the town of Ceglie Messapica, every dish reveals new layers of complexity that belies the kind of catch-all utilitarian implication of cucina povera. The Silibello family offers a crash course in the ingredients of the Salento region: Lampascioni, often translated as “bitter onion” but actually the bulb of a type of hyacinth, takes on the consistency of burnt newsprint when fried, yielding a bitterness that prepares the palate for what comes next. Stringy stracciatella cheese is teleported out of the heart of the burrata balls where it’s most often found, and spread out onto overflowing plates, to be eaten by the dripping forkful. Slices of capocollo and other cuts from the Apulo-Calabrese black pig are arranged into a gradient of richness with clear instructions on how to avoid blowing out your taste buds with hits of lard too early. To bring us back to earth, a Pugliese classic that emerged from tough times: fave e cicoria, a bed of mashed fava beans, topped with chicory leaves and lashed with olive oil. A ragù follows, made with tender horse meat and ricotta forte (an aged, barnyard-forward cheese with a long shelf life ideal for peasant pantries), and juicy, butter-soft slices of beef from the region’s Podolica cow, equally prized for its meat as for its milk.

With its familial ambience, its focus on hearty, of-the-soil ingredients, and its secret, in-house cheese cave, Cibus is the kind of place most travelers dream about when they dream about Italy. And it is exactly as satisfying as you might imagine. Here, all of Signoroni’s “romantic ideas of tradition,” are confirmed to carry at least a foundation of reality. But just 30 miles away, in the town of Putignano, those vague notions of some idealized past are being intentionally—and ruthlessly—torn apart.

At Osteria Botteghe Antiche, chef Stefano D’Onghia takes many of the same ingredients—the same dishes, even—and brings them into a kind of parallel universe where what is known and established gives way to what there is left to learn. There is lampascioni here too, but it is accompanied by a kind of capocollo pocket, filled with chickpea purée. Fave e cicoria becomes a vague signpost rather than a cornerstone of tradition: The fava purée is stuffed into a single grilled green pepper and served alongside a spoonful of caramelized red onions. Ricotta makes an appearance, too, but it is imbued with mint and hidden within the delicate folds of a zucchini flower. Orecchiette, the ear-shaped pasta often served in Puglia with broccoli rabe, is made—intentionally, cheekily—with grano arso, burnt grain that for centuries was the only stuff available to the poorest of the poor. It shares the plate with indulgent chunks of grilled octopus, as if to say look how far we’ve come.

The next evolution of D’Onghia’s menu will be a push toward sustainability, something he argues is at the core of Puglia’s seemingly simple, local-first cuisine. “Nowadays it’s hard to sell a meat dish for less than 18 euros, which is strange for a region like Puglia,” D’Onghia told me. “I want to think about how to make cuts of meat that are not expensive—liver, tongue, offal—just as delicious.” He points to the octopus orecchiette as a dish that is becoming just too expensive for him to sell. What would it taste like, he wonders, if instead of serving the meat, he sous-vide cooked the octopus’s liver, a piece often discarded by fishermen? Somewhere, in someone’s imagined reality, a nonna in a sauce-streaked apron can’t believe her ears.

Other days highlight both the diversity of the gastronomic scene and the utter impossibility of fitting it into a neat package. There’s the pork cookout in the sun-slapped courtyard of a pig farm belonging to local producers Salumi Martina Franca. It lasts for hours, and transitions organically into a long walk through the land where the animals roam free. At Intini, an olive oil producer outside of Alberobello, a fourth-generation maker explains how some visitors are disappointed to see gleaming industrial equipment instead of charming wooden presses. “If I made it the traditional way, it wouldn’t be good,” Pietro Intini says. “The real revolution in olive oil production only happened 20 years ago.”

Even where traditions do remain intact, modernity creeps in. In Taranto’s Mare Piccolo, an inland sea, Luciano Carriero, a mussel farmer from a family of mussel farmers, explains how a tight-knit network of families has come together to create a cooperative, keeping the sticky fingers of organized crime away. As we float around the bay, he draws long necklaces of the bivalves out of the water and shucks them on the spot, to be eaten raw, paired with bites of provolone cheese and washed down with sparkling wine. He insists I try more than one. “It’s like a big box of chocolates,” Carriero says, one-upping Forrest Gump forever. “Each mussel tastes a little different.” That night, I follow his bounty to its final resting place at Antica Osteria la Sciabica, tucked away along a seaside promenade in the city of Brindisi. The seafood soup doubles as a taxonomy of marine life: fish, squid, shrimp, and, yes, mussels, all afloat in a rich, tomato-based broth. The restaurant buzzes with the sounds of spoons scraping the very last drops from drained bowls.

There is something about visiting the so-called “Old World” as a resident of the so-called “New” one that sets off a kind of rabid, voyeuristic urge to witness “tradition.” Some parts of Puglia, like the family-run cheese cave hidden under a bookshelf at Cibus, or the focaccerias in every village churning out flatbreads in the same oven for generations, do feel stuck in time, and I feel an almost involuntary delight whenever I encounter people doing things as they had been done since before Italy was Italy. But I soon find myself most looking forward to the moments of disruption. I had been warned, in a way, by Signoroni’s meditations on what we often expect from so-called “authentic experiences.” I had caught little rebellions in the form of culinary innovation, and in the subtle twisting of convention. But nothing, it was becoming clear, is that simple.

On the outskirts of Bari, in Altamura, I meet Vito Dicecca who, along with his siblings, has inherited the family cheesemaking tradition, which he treats with all the sacrosanct rulebook-abidance of a mad scientist. Out of a relatively small kitchen, the Dicecca family whips up around 800 pounds of lactic heresy every day. “Anyone in Puglia can make small cheese,” Dicecca says before pointing to his brother Paolo who is in the process of tying a mozzarella knot the size of a newborn. “I want to make big cheese.” He shows off a milky goat cheese concoction, best used as a dip for crispy bagel-shaped taralli crackers (“the best drunk food,” Dicecca calls it). A bright orange cousin to caciocavallo goes by the name “Life on Mars.” While conventional wisdom says mozzarella needs to be made from buffalo milk, the Dicecca family makes a goat milk version, granting the usually mild cheese a deliciously grassy funk.

To try Dicecca’s wildest creation, I have to wait until we leave the shop in Altamura and travel into the pinewoods of the Mercadante nature reserve. There, the family has opened Baby Dicecca, a cheese bar that serves as a tasting room and satellite for experimentation. After the kind of long, languorous meal I’ve grown accustomed to in Puglia, Dicecca brings out dessert. Looking more like a cake than a wheel of cheese, this has, for good reason, become the Diceccas’ most famous act of sacrilege. To create it, he drops a wheel of blue cheese into a barrel of primitivo wine, where it soaks for 100 days. Afterwards, it’s topped with candied sour cherries, adding a tartness to the indulgent sweet and salty combination. It’s cut into wedges that are intentionally about 12 times too big for one person to handle and served with even more primitivo wine. It’s called, Dicecca tells me with a conspiratorial grin, “Amore Primitivo.”

This, I think, seems like the kind of person who takes great pride in his inventions, who revels in the fact that he’s challenging tradition with each new wacky idea. Does he spend as much time thinking about authenticity as I do? “Are you worried someone is going to take your idea, or try to do some other, worse version of it?” I ask. I imagine grocery stores lined with tasteless, harmless cheeses, smothered in neon jelly.

“It doesn’t matter who invents the thing or who has the original story,” Dicecca says while doling out the next in an endless series of wine refills. “It only matters who does it best.”

Recipes

Brindisi Seafood Stew

Get the recipe >

Orecchiette with Octopus Ragù and Chickpea Purée

Get the recipe >

Ricotta-Stuffed Squash Blossoms with Fried Zucchini Coins

Get the recipe >

Fave e Cicoria (Mashed Fava Beans with Puntarelle)

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Chef Stefano D’Onghia opened Botteghe Antiche on a storybook square in the town of Putignano after apprenticing at several high-end restaurants around Southern Italy. “You have to walk a careful line between respecting tradition and innovating,” he says of his constantly changing menu, which leans toward cheeky takes on Pugliese classics. This dish seems designed to foreground versatility: a single plant, torn asunder to build two very different experiences. The lightness of airy, minty ricotta nestled in delicate zucchini flowers provides a bite-by-bite counterpoint to the heartier fried zucchini coins.

Featured in “The Cuisine of Puglia Defies Definition,” by Sebastian Modak.

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At Botteghe Antiche, Chef Stefano D’Onghia makes orecchiette with grano arso flour. Literally translating to “burnt grain,” grano arso is thought to refer to what was left behind after the stubble of harvested wheat fields had been burnt off, often gathered by poor farmers before the next crop was planted. Store-bought pasta will suffice, and you can find dried grano arso orecchiette in specialty Italian food shops. D’Onghia pairs the pasta with indulgent chunks of octopus instead of the traditional broccoli rabe.

Featured in “The Cuisine of Puglia Defies Definition,” by Sebastian Modak.

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At La Sciabica, a seaside outpost in the Adriatic port city of Brindisi, this seafood stew is a culmination of generations of fishermen throwing whatever they’ve got into a pot and feeding a family. In chef Ernesto Palma’s original recipe, he instructs cooks to “look at the sea for a minute” while adjusting the salt to taste before serving.

Featured in “The Cuisine of Puglia Defies Definition,” by Sebastian Modak.

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This creamy and aromatic chicken is cooked down in coconut milk, brightened with fresh tomato and lime. The resulting gravy pairs beautifully with cassava, a dense and starchy tuber integral to foodways of the African diaspora, particularly in Latin America. You may use one whole chicken or an equal weight of Cornish hens, which are traditional in Palenque, Colombia, cuisine. 

Featured in “Colombia and West Africa Unite on the Plate in this Fascinating Food Town,” by Kayla Stewart.

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