We decided to move our beach day to tomorrow and go hiking instead. Chances of thunderstorms in the late morning and late afternoon gave us a window large enough to do our hike, and maybe get rain on the drive.
First stop: “breakfast”. We’re heading to Masseria Lupata, a Mozzarella Bufala producer that offers a tasting of different Buffalo-based products. Cheeses, of course, but also gelatos. As promised they were open but only to purchase cheese at their counter. While you could read the perfectly enticing menu, nobody was available to serve it on their beautiful terrace. The staff were actually surprised to see us asking to eat there when we showed up around lunchtime (12:30). Not sure how to say no, they told us to sit at a table, and someone would come and see us. Twenty minutes later, no one came. Seeing our chance of a delicious, locally made, cheesy breakfast evaporate, we soldier on.
A little searching on Google Maps showed us there was an all-day restaurant less than one kilometre from our hiking destination. It’s a little over an hour’s drive on winding mountain roads, but at the end, there was food.
If you drive in rural Italy, know that Italians are mad drivers. On roads with speed limits at 50kph and sharp hairpin turns every kilometre or so, we were passed by a car going at least 100kph. It isn’t very comforting. And Italian road planners are just as mad. Roads meet at all angles; some become one-way for no reason, with a bypass to a parallel road that merges back 500 meters later. I’ve turned left at intersections three times in a row and yet remained on the same road. It makes no sense.
As you might have guessed by reading these lines, I survived and didn’t get lost. It’s no small thanks to Google Maps’ turn-by-turn directions. Without it, I would likely still be driving on the Möbius strip that are Italian roads. Use a GPS around here, that’s all I’m saying.
We made it to the restaurant, which was most definitely closed. Is it closed today? Just now? Forever? Nobody can tell. We’ve been up for a little over 3 hours and have only managed to eat a couple of fruits from a stand on the road. I’m starving and a little cranky. We considered our options: do the trail without eating, wait the 2 hours of hiking and another hour back to Masseria Lupata for some cheese, try to hunt down another open restaurant in the area and then go on the hike, or turn back and go straight to eating. In the end, it’s the last option that won. We’ve been meeting restaurants marked as open on Google Maps, but that were closed regularly since we entered the region, and there’s no reason to believe our luck would be any different when searching for food in a small village during siesta.
How do you move on from a failed hiking plan? You go to a winery to eat and taste some wine. Technically, I go to eat, and Karine goes for the whole experience of eating and drinking. She is our wine taster when we’re driving and falls on that sword willingly and with some skills. She gets us outstanding wine all the time.
We went to Vini del Cavaliere. They make wine from locally grown grapes, some of which are grown in the front yard of the place. We arrived as the only visitors. We would have expected other wine enthusiasts to be sitting, eating, and tasting wine. There was nobody. We thought the place was closed, but a lady came out and confirmed they were open, and we could taste and sample local cheese and charcuterie. She had me at “you can eat”. The wine turned out to be excellent. Karine had some of it shipped home, and we took two bottles (one Rosé, one white) to take with us and apéro with.
Next stop: Masseria Lupata. We really want to taste Buffala cheese made in its region of origin by a small, local, producer. We were expecting to find the place alive with people, with table service on their terrace, or at least the option to order from their menu. No luck. It’s still as deserted. The gelato stand has the last dregs of what I’m sure used to be excellent Buffala gelato. There’s still no table service. This time, the lady who greets us explains that lunch is over, but she will let us order some produce at the counter and put it on a plate instead of a bag, and we’ll be allowed to have it on the terrace. Not the experience we had in mind, but we really wanted the cheese.
The cheese, as it turns out, was excellent. The mozzarella was soft, textured, juicy and tasty. We had ricotta that actually tasted of something and didn’t look like the cat's leftovers on the floor after too much yogurt. The experience was less than stellar, but the beauty of the place made up for it.
We made our way back to the apartment, bought some bread from the bakery downstairs and settled for the apéro. My chance to taste some wine Karine selected didn’t start well. There’s no corkscrew. Have you tried to ask people where to buy a corkscrew? Turns out nobody knows. It seemed like the kind of thing every Italian had, and they all offered to open our bottle, but nobody could tell us where to get the implement. Karine found one in the local Dollar Store. The thing didn’t even manage to open a single bottle before breaking in half. In the end, we had to resort to MacGyvering something to open the bottle. And it was all worth it.
If today has proven anything, it is that no plan survives contact with reality. Hopefully, tomorrow will prove that a beach day can be relaxing, especially if you don’t have a plan.