12/10/2025: Fiori di Zucca
As a child, I often visited my grandparents in Italy – and today, 60 years later, all those memories flooded back.
In this restaurant in the south of Lecce, which appears unassuming from the outside, the food simply tastes like it did back then: authentic, honest, incredibly good.
A place where you can truly savor Puglia.
A must-try!
Fiori di Zucca
As a child, I often found my grandparents in Italy – and today, after 60 years, they have truly savoured wonderful memories.
In this seemingly simple restaurant in the south of Lecce, the flavors are always authentic: genuine, sincere, and indispensable.
A post should be sent to Puglia from the palace.
There you prove it absolutely! 🇮🇹
11/10/2025: This was an odd experience. Most importantly, the food is delicious, wonderful in fact. Exactly what I wanted - a taste of Lecce.
We started with the fiori di zucca fritti and a sample of olive oil toasts. I had the Sagne Nnannulate with the tomato sauce with horse meat, lovely balance of richness and savory tomato flavor. My wife enjoyed the Ciceri e tria pasta, also wonderful. We paired it with a nice rose wine.
Where I felt bothered was how we were treated. This is my 10th trip to Italy, so I know the customs and embrace them fully. I am not fluent but speak Italian decently for a tourist. We were dressed as well as anyone who showed up. We arrived shortly after the restaurant opened at 8pm. There was a large tour group eating inside. However we were told we could only eat outside. OK, I understand it's Saturday night maybe there were many reservations so we took seats outside. But it was evident that we were not welcome for whatever reason. We could tell from the conversations as people rang the bell to enter, half of the people who arrived afterwards didn't have reservations. I speak well enough to understand the language of the restaurant. YET NO ONE ELSE WAS MADE TO SIT OUTSIDE. Each time the door opened, we hear people inside enjoying themselves and we were alone outside.
While food service was OK, in my many visits to Italy this was the first time I was made to feel like a stranger. Made more apparent every time the front door closed.
To reiterate, the food is wonderful. The inside atmosphere and decor, from what we could see through the windows like beggars, is charming.
We just didn't feel welcome. We skipped dessert downed a coffee, paid and left.
We felt welcome in Bari for 3 nights but Lecce was not welcoming this night. Dumb luck I guess.
Google
TripAdvisor