What food to try when in Cinque Terre?

When in Italy you most definitely have to try the local cuisine as often as possible. I suggest you stay away from hamburgers and French fries while around. If you just can't get along without at least some kind of junk food, I'm pretty sure you can find some local supplement.

Pizza and various pasta dishes can be found all over Italy, but every region has also something special to offer. Liguria is no different (Cinque Terre National Park is situated in the Liguria region).


Best known dishes throughout the region of Liguria are pansoti, trofie, pesto, frisceu, focaccia with cheese and farinata.
Considering the region has lots of coast, sea-food is also very popular. One can find almost any kind of sea dish here: mussels, crab and lobster, tuna, anchovies and many other sorts of fish.
There is also a variety of wine produced there (mostly various dry whites).

M. and I both love Italian food, but this time we were not very successful in finding and tasting many of the dishes mentioned above. There are just so many things to do and always so little time. Budget can also be an important issue - good food is never cheap.

Despite all that, we did try some of the local specialties. One of those is (as I already mentioned in one of my earlier posts) freshly made pesto sauce.


Another simple dish also caught our attention. It was Focaccia con le olive - delicious salty bread with olives (you can see some leftovers on the first photo). We also stopped at a local enoteca for a couple glasses of local wine. It wasn't cheap, but we really enjoyed the wine and relaxed atmosphere. We sat there for quite a while and watched people walking by.

If you liked this post and are interested in more information on our trip, please click on this link or on the Cinque Terre label in the right frame.