Optimum Where to eat

The province of Piceno is usually portrayed as an ensemble of places offering a wide variety of sceneries, cultures and savours, and forming a microcosm that is still widely unknown (to people from elsewhere but not only) and waiting to be adequately promoted (by internal actors, i.e. producers, operators, local governments, hotel keepers and restaurateurs). As a matter of fact, there aren't many Italian provinces offering the opportunity of reaching the mountains from the coast in a half-an-hour drive, passing through the charming chief town or well-preserved small centres of great fascination nestled in highly enjoyable hilly belts.

The variedness of the landscape is matched with a wealth of food resources and gastronomic traditions, so that one can pass from the uncountable local recipes prepared with fresh fish thanks to the presence of the second port in Italy as for fishing volumes, to the mushrooms and truffles of the mountain areas, driving through hills that are the cradle of oil and wine, market gardens and orchards - a decidedly interesting gastronomic ecosystem, also by virtue of a good degree of preservation. Preservation of the environment and the landscape and also, as far as possible, of the memory of local identity elements of which recipes - often from oral tradition rather than professional systematization - are no minor aspect.

Tourism trends appear increasingly oriented towards a demand for places where cultural identity elements, preservation of environment and historic-artistic heritage, as well as high-quality food-and-wine as a further interpretation key, call for strategies and forms of integration of the various actors that can no longer disregard a modern logic of territorial promotion and need upgrading their skills, especially in the restaurant and accommodation sections.

Beside offering the above-mentioned wealth of gastronomic traditions (recipes with remarkable originality and a powerful symbolic content, from the fish soup to the mild and olives stuffed with minced meat and fried "all'Ascolana" ("the Ascoli way"); the whole vegetarian section based on vegetables and herbs; poultry, sheep, pork by-products; sweetmeats prepared with dried fruit, boiled-down wine and aniseeds), the territory takes healthiness-guarantee measures (from beef certification to the remarkable quota of organic production) that enrich - or rather would enrich - an articulate offer that, in its present state, appears decidedly susceptible of improvement. In particular, starting right from the restaurants, the level of the offer is still inadequate in that, instead of emphasizing the excellence of local ingredients with intelligent consciousness, it is all too often wandering aimlessly between careless trivialization of the territorial tradition and some unsuccessful attempts at mimicking exotic cooking.

Farm holiday facilities and the B&B's most recently created only in a few cases appear adequately equipped to meet the requirements of close contact with the patrimony of local products and scattered landmarks that should be their constant point of reference. Of course there are positive exceptions, but for the time being they are just exceptions: a concrete work of upgrading and sensible planning can no longer be put off.

Optimum Where to eat

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