The food in Lecce is some of the best in Puglia. Just as we were crying out "Basta Pasta!" we found Cucina Casareccia, a restaurant in the loosest sense of the word.
It's two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor of a house just outside the old center. You ring the doorbell to enter the domain of Anna Carmela Perrone, who does the cooking and serving with two other women while her husband buses tables and tries to stay out of the way.
There is no menu. Perrone comes to your table, hands clasped in front of her, and more or less divines what you will eat. Her English is limited, so some Italian table vocabulary is a plus.
After our antipasti, which included battered and deep-fried olives, grilled eggplant and more, Perrone queried: "You would maybe like to start with a tart of potatoes and mussels, or perhaps orecchiette ? Do you eat horse? No? Then maybe you would like the lamb interior [liver, heart, lungs, etc.], or then why not the stuffed calamari," and so on.
We returned the next night for more in one of the few unanimous family decisions of the trip.
To the End of Italy
On our last excursion, we followed the highway down the Salento peninsula near the tip of the heel to Otranto, known for its cathedral and its detailed 11th-century mosaic floor recounting Christendom from Adam and Eve to King Arthur and featuring all sorts of fanciful twin-headed creatures. (On a more gruesome note, a chapel in the side of the cathedral displays the skulls and bones of several hundred local "martyrs" beheaded by invading Turks in 1480. The altar contains the actual chopping block. Depending on your child, this can be a point of interest.)
Given the eerie history, and what I'd read by one British travel writer who practically claimed to have discovered the place yesterday, I imagined Otranto as a forgotten, end-of-the-earth hamlet where the locals spoke some ancient version of Greek and worshiped tree gods, and the women veiled themselves in black. What we found was something quite different -- a well-manicured port town with restaurants, tourist shops and signs everywhere pointing to another outpost built by foreigners: Club Med.
Robert V. Camuto last wrote for Travel about Toulouse, France.
Details: Puglia, Italy
GETTING THERE: Fly to Rome or another European capital, then into the Bari or Brindisi airport on a European budget airline. Round- trip flights from Dulles to Rome start at $1,096, with one stop. Alitalia flies from Rome to Bari for $457 round trip. Britain's low-cost Ryanair ( http://www.ryanair.com/ ) has round-trip fares starting at about $85 from London's Stansted Airport.
GETTING AROUND: A car is necessary to explore Puglia. Check rates of international companies and reserve in advance.
WHEN TO GO: Best times are May, June and September. Avoid August, when Italians flock to the area's beaches.
