An Appetite for Umbria: The People, the Places, the Food

This travel-guide-with-recipes profiles 28 restaurants in the Italian region of Umbria, home to storied towns such as Assisi, Orvieto, Perugia, and Spoleto.

Amazingly for a book published in 2005, 19 of the restaurants are operating in March, 2022. (Six are definitely closed, one has been reincarnated elsewhere, and the status of the last is unclear).

Author Christine Smallwood, a veteran travel writer, is as interested in the people who run the restaurants and how these places fit within their communities, as she is in the recipes, though the latter are clearly written.

At Il Granaro del Monte in Norcia, a mountain town famed for its wild boar products, six generations of the Bianconi family have worked the restaurant (and a seventh has probably joined by now). At Caffe Sandri in Perugia, you can enjoy pastry in a shop that has been serving visitors and locals since 1860.

Handsome color photographs throughout depict people and landscapes as well as the food. Paperback.

Companion volumes are available for Lombardy and Puglia.