25. What local food specialties should we look for?

The area is famous for truffles, porcini mushrooms, and superior pork products.  Spoleto – a beautiful city any time of year – is generally regarded as the epicenter of black truffles, but you can enjoy them throughout Umbria.

In season, grilled porcini mushrooms are delicious and (even brushed with olive oil and rubbed with garlic) basically non-fattening. As your first course, be sure to order tagliatelli with porcini: hand-made flat pasta with sliced porcini mushrooms (no tomato sauce, no cream).  It’s a rare Umbrian menu that doesn’t offer tagliatelli, a keystone of the regional cuisine.

Similarly, Norcia is the epicenter for pork, but all Umbrian pork products – sausages,  prosciutto and pork roast (arista) should be sampled.

Do look for pecorino cheese – sheeps’ milk cheese which is native to central Italy. It is delicious in all of its forms: soft, medium, hard, with truffles.

And, of course, just outside Perugia, Perugina chocolates are made fresh everyday.