Best Italian Food to Try - Ultimate Street Food Tour in Bari, Italy

Do you have a spoon? Yes, and I have a fork. And a racket. Very good! So, here I am in Bari. Bari is the capital of Puglia. It's hot outside right now. I'm very excited to try some traditional foods from Puglia. So I was told that this bakery shop is the one for focaccia in Bari. There are many different versions of focaccia across Italy. The one you can find here is focaccia barese, also known as focaccia pugliese. It is typically dressed with cherry tomatoes, olives and sprinkled with oregano. The dough is made from durum wheat and boiled potatoes are added to get that special texture. Focaccia from Bari is less tall than other versions, but they all share the same softness in the middle and the crispy exterior. Focaccia is typically eaten as a snack or to accompany an aperitivo. This bakery also offers legendary panzerotto and scagliose. Panzerotto is a true classic in the Puglian cuisine. This pocket of deep fried dough resembles a small calzone and is traditionally stuffed with tomato and mozzarella. These cute panzerotti are the perfect quick bite and they are also super cheap. Scagliose is a signature street food item from Bari. These rectangular pieces of fried polenta is eaten hot, preferably on the go while wandering the old town of Bari. Okay, these three street food items are a must-do experience for any foodie while visiting Bari or Puglia in general. Put them on your list, prego! So, let's see what we have here. The focaccia bread. It's very similar to pizza dough. You have the crust which is crispy and the soft inside and this looks delicious. Wow! I can't stress enough how good Italians are on bread. Let's try another traditional food item. So, I have the legendary panzerotto. This is similar to a calzone and the filling should be tomatoes and mozzarella. This panzerotto is a lot smaller than the one I tried in Milano. Wow! However, I'm not sure if I got any tomatoes here but panzerotti can't go wrong. Okay, let's enjoy the last food item. The legendary scagliose. Sorry if I'm butchering that word. So, this should be fried polenta and they come in these rectangular shapes. Very simple but yet a perfect quick bite on the streets here in Bari. So, it's very savory. You can definitely feel that fried crust and it's also soft on the inside. How amazing was that? I would also like to thank the bakery for letting me film. They gave me this for free. How kind! Grazie! The food tour continues through the alleyways in Bari. This alley is located very close to the castle and here you will find ladies rolling out handmade pasta in front of their doorways. Can you believe that? The name of the pasta is orecchiette which means little ears. Watching these ladies make this traditional pasta is love at first sight. The last step where the small pieces of pasta dough turns into a beautiful artwork might look easy but takes probably years of practice. Watching these ladies flip out orecchiette is one thing. Eating it at one of the ladies' house is another. Honestly, it doesn't get better than this. So, outside here is the street where the old ladies prepare the traditional pasta. How do you pronounce it? Orecchiette. So, how cool is this? Out on the streets, there are old ladies preparing this orecchiette. I'm very excited to try it right now. Wow! And I got it with some kind of light sauce. I paid 5 euro for this. This pasta is very loved by the locals here. Wow! What I also read is that the name of this pasta is named after the shape. So, this resembles a small ear and that's what orecchiette means. Sorry if I'm butchering that word. They also come in different sizes. So, this is the classic size. They are kind of small but you have the huge ones as well and in different colors. Wow! I love when they prepare it in front of you on the street. So, I think I'm sitting at someone's home right now. Delicious! Okay. Can you say the name again? There you have the right pronunciation. That light tomato sauce fits perfectly here. Now, that was a true Bari experience. So, here is where I had my orecchiette. I did it! The Skagliose earlier in the episode was just a warm-up for the Skagliose da Maria, also located in the old town. Maria is the queen of this legendary street food item from Bari. Go stand right in front of the door opening and enjoy the front row view of everything. Be careful though, staring down into the frying pot can be hypnotizing and trigger excessive buying behavior. Jokes aside, you get six pieces of Skagliose for only one euro. This should be more than enough. Now, this will get salty and greasy the way street food should be. It's another old lady making delicious food and she only concentrates on Skagliose, refining it to the finest. This is a true Bari food experience. So, you get them in this bag. A little bit less salty than the first one I tried today but the crust is much more crisp. Sorry? Oh, you did? I'm from Gothenburg. Have you heard of it? Yeah. How am one gonna eat six pieces of these? They are very unhealthy but I think Italians are unhealthy. Am I wrong? Now, that is real street food. Wow. That was it for this episode, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. See you in the next one.