THE WONDERS OF LOCAL CUISINE, The Wonders Of Local Cuisine

Hi, my name’s Scott, and I’m your personal guide. Along with MyWoWo, I’d like to welcome you to the wonderful flavors of Bergamo’s cuisine.

Local specialties can be found in abundance in Bergamo. Their origins go back a long way, and they feature ingredients from the plains and the valleys around the city.

The typical starters are the salamis made by hand locally. The most famous is undoubtedly salame della bergamasca, which is quite soft and flavored with wine, but of course we mustn’t forget other specialties such as cacciatore, a small type of salami aged for just a few weeks, as well as other pork products such as cotechino (stuffed pigs’ trotters), lard, sausage and pancetta, a kind of streaky bacon.

The best-known local first course is casoncelli, a pasta shaped like a candy wrapper, stuffed with meat, cheese and vegetables, served with melted butter, grated grana padano cheese, pancetta and sage. On local menus, you’ll also be likely to find scarpinocc, another type of ravioli made with fresh pasta, whose name derives from the resemblance to the shoes (scarpe in Italian) that used to be worn in Parre, the village in Val Seriana the dish originates from. In this case, the filling does not contain meat, but breadcrumbs, cheese and a variety of spices.

Bergamo cuisine also means polenta e osei, polenta with little birds....