Triest Trst Trieszt Trieste Tourism Informations and city Portal

There are hundreds of good reasons to come to Trieste, not least for its cuisine. Prepare yourself then, for a brief guided tour of some of the best eateries in the city.

There are restaurants of all sort.

Recipes of the tipical gastronomy come from countries of Austria, Hungary, Slovenija, Croatia, and seafood.

If you should find yourself on or around the largest seaside square in Europe, pop in to a Buffet for a snack. This seemingly unassuming little café has even enjoyed a mention in the New York Times. Here, at any time of day or night, you can try boiled pork, toasted ham sandwiches, sausages with sauerkraut and horseradish and paprika sauces. These can be washed down with either beer or Terrano - a full-flavoured red wine from the Carso region which even has a street named after it. Prices here are relatively low.

If however, you would prefer to combine elegance with tradition and modernity with delicious flavours, you should try the trattoria which offers gastronomic delights for carnivores. Even Pope John Paul II has dined here! In an impeccably elegant setting, you will be able to choose from an excellent selection of both international and local dishes including Jota, a hearty bacon rind soup, goulash, tripe, veal stew, bread gnocchi or gnocchi stuffed with jam or prunes, ham and an excellent selection of desserts.

Seafood is a must in a place like Trieste. There are dozens of seafood restaurants here and they are all of the highest quality so you will be spoilt for choice. However, you should definitely visit either an elegant restaurant on the coast.

Still in the city centre, you should try a small pastry shop: It is one of the oldest of its kind in Italy and was visted for breakfast by James Joyce every morning between 1910 and 1914. Today it sells a wonderful selection of cream pastries and other delightful Central European sweets such as presnitz (a pastry made from nuts and dried fruit, in the shape of Christs crown of thorns), putizza (puff pastry) with honey, fave (almond balls with rose oil and cocoa), crostoli, fritole and fritters with pine kernels which are typically made for the carnival.

We can now turn inland towards the upland plains of the Carso, only a fifteen minute drive from the city. It is here that the majority of Italys ex Yugoslavian community lives. Besides being able to enjoy magnificent views and go on memorable walks, you will be able to visit family-run farm shops and osmize, where farmers can (in accordance what was originally an Imperial decree) sell their own produce usually in spring and summer.

In many of the small villages around Trieste such as Monrupino, San Dorligo, Basovizza and the charming Muggia (which stands suspended between land and sea in the east of the province), you will be able to try cheeses such as Tabor, home made salami, gnocchi and various meats as well as a selection of regional wines such as Malvasia, Vitovska Garganja and Terrano.

In conclusion, a word of warning: The people of Trieste (escpecially those in the Carso region) are not particularly hospitable and tend to go to great lengths to avoid having to make conversation perhaps through laziness, or perhaps through force of habit. You have to accept them as they are: slightly mad, rather surly, occasionally good-natured and often anchored to the past, with a penchant for day-dreaming. However, if you get to know them (and Trieste), you will not be able to help but fall in love with this marvellous city which the journalist Julian Evans once described in Condè Nast Traveller as the true capital of the Adriatic in no way inferior to Venice. Bon appetit!

Both the food and the wine of the area are a symbol of identity, a point of pride for locals. In Friuli-Venezia Giulia, people take their food and wine very seriously. Cooks ritually prepare five-course family meals, make fillings for fresh pasta that contain as many as forty ingredients, and raise the preparation of polenta and gnocchi to an art form.

Antipasti include frico and the subtle Prosciutto from the town of San Daniele (connoisseurs prefer it to saltier Prosciutto di Parma, but you decide). Favored first courses are gnocchi, mostly made from potatoes, and heaping mounds of polenta topped with everything imaginable: salt cod, melted Montasio cheese, a hearty pork ragù. Bean soups abound, and many are flavored with a ham bone. But the most representative soup of all is jota, a thick smoked pork and sauerkraut soup with clear Austrian origins. There are as many versions of jota as there are cooks; some include barley, others include pork rind or beans.

Near the coast, especially in Trieste, cooks rely on fish and seafood more often than meat. The seafood cuisine is different from elsewhere in Italy, for it makes use of fresh herbs like dill and tarragon, fruits and vegetables like apples and horseradish, and delicately tangy sour cream, ingredients that are almost never seen in other regional Italian cuisines.

Pork is the region's most beloved meat; mountain and hill cookery draws inspiration and sustenance from the pig's versatile meat, and transforms every part of the animal into something edible.

Lamb, chicken, beef, and veal are also brought to the table, and they are frequently doused in wine while braising to perfection. Staple vegetables are potatoes, cabbage, and beans, but the most typical Friulian side dish is a preparation called brovade, made by fermenting turnips with grape skins in covered containers.

Be prepared to eat in a lot of others locals called " buffet ", a mitteleuropean legacy. Here you have porc of all sort: boiled, gammon, ham braised or uncooked, sausages, etc. Krauti, potatoes, etc.

Off course you can eat pizza and cinese food too.

Friuli-Venezia Giulia's dessert table shows a palpable Austro-Hungarian imprint: there are all manners of fruit dumplings rolled in cinnamon butter and bread crumbs, as well as a variety of nut- or cheese- or fruit-filled strudels.

Delicatessen: from Austria presnitz, strudel, palacinken, Sacher; from Venice fave, pinza, fritole. There are from Hungary too.

Today it sells a wonderful selection of cream pastries and other delightful Central European sweets such as presnitz (a pastry made from nuts and dried fruit, in the shape of Christs crown of thorns), putizza (puff pastry) with honey, fave (almond balls with rose oil and cocoa), crostoli, fritole and fritters with pine kernels which are typically made for the carnival.