Get to know the food of Friuli If there’s one region that really exemplifies just how varied Italian food is, it’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia (or Friuli, for short). Sharing a mountainous Alpine border with Austria and Slovenia, the local cuisine is hearty and robust, with stews, pastries, polenta and dumplings being more common than pasta, pizza and gelato. Sauerkraut-based stews, mountain cheeses and sweets flavoured with prunes and apples are the calling cards of Friulian cuisine – not things we instantly think of when talking about Italian food.
But there’s plenty of Mediterranean flavours on offer too, from the fish caught along the region’s Adriatic coastline to the beloved prosciutto di San Daniele. Trieste is the capital, and where a lot of the region’s most famous dishes originate. The city is almost a region of its own, with its own dialect and a coastal climate far removed from the mountains in the north.
Historically Trieste was an important city in the Hapsburg Empire, and after World War I Italy and Yugoslavia both sought to possess it until in 1954 it was finally divided between them with Italy taking the largest part. It’s just a few miles away from the Slovenian border and Croatia is a short boat trip south; as a result, there’s a clear eastern European influence on the local culture. Further north, everything gets a little more Alpine – rustic, hearty fare makes the most of the fantastic dairy produce.
But it’s not all craggy mountains and sno.
