Marche Food & Traditional Cuisine

Marche's food reflects its structure. The coast eats from the Adriatic, and every port has its own version of brodetto, the fish stew — the recipes differ by town and the differences are argued over. Inland the cooking turns to pork, egg pasta, truffle and cheese, and gets richer the further from the sea you go.

Two things run through all of it. The region has never exported its cooking, so almost nothing here is familiar from Italian restaurants abroad. And it is a region of small producers rather than large ones — pit-aged cheese, hand-cut salami, wild mussels gathered by a handful of licensed divers.

The sections below cover the dishes, where they are bought and eaten, and a wine region that has two of the most serious white denominations in Italy.

Marche's classics are labour-intensive in a way that reflects household cooking rather than restaurant technique.

The famous one

Olive all'ascolana — large green olives from Ascoli Piceno, pitted by hand in a spiral, stuffed with a mixture of three meats, then breaded and fried. The industrial version is everywhere in Italy; the real thing, made properly in Ascoli, is a different food.

Pasta

• Vincisgrassi — a layered baked pasta, older and richer than lasagne, traditionally with a ragù of offal and a great deal of butter. The name is usually attributed, probably wrongly, to an Austrian general.
• Maccheroncini di Campofilone IGP — very fine egg pasta, cut thin and dried, from a single village.
• Passatelli — breadcrumb, egg and parmesan pushed through a press, served in broth or, on the coast, with fish.

From the sea

• Brodetto — the Adriatic fish stew, with a distinct version in each port. Ancona's uses thirteen kinds of fish and no tomato purée; Porto Recanati's is pale and uses saffron; San Benedetto's includes green tomato and vinegar.
• Moscioli di Portonovo — wild mussels growing on the Conero rocks, hand-gathered, a Slow Food presidium, in season roughly April to October.
• Stoccafisso all'anconetana — dried cod stewed with potatoes, tomato and marjoram.

Inland

• Ciauscolo IGP — a soft, spreadable salami, the region's most distinctive cured meat.
• Casciotta d'Urbino DOP — a mild sheep-and-cow cheese, reportedly Michelangelo's favourite.
• Formaggio di fossa — cheese matured in tufa pits sealed for around three months, giving an intense, almost gamey flavour. Unearthed in late November.
• Coniglio in porchetta — rabbit boned and stuffed with wild fennel and its own liver.

Sweets and truffle

Acqualagna is one of Italy's main truffle towns, producing white truffle in autumn and black through much of the year. For sweets: frustingo, a dense Christmas cake of dried figs and nuts, and cicerchiata, honeyed fried dough balls at Carnival.

Marche's food culture is small-town and unhurried, and it has almost no tourist-facing layer — the places that matter are the ones locals use.

Markets

• Ancona holds a covered market off Corso Mazzini, with a fish section supplied by the port each morning.
• Most towns have a weekly market; Ascoli Piceno, Macerata and Jesi have the largest in their areas.
• Fish is landed and sold at San Benedetto del Tronto, Civitanova and Fano, where the afternoon auction is a working event rather than a spectacle.

The osteria and the agriturismo

Inland, the osteria is the traditional venue — a short menu, often no written list, and the same six or seven dishes done properly. Agriturismi in the hills serve their own pork, cheese and wine and are frequently better value than restaurants.

Vernacchia and the fairs

Autumn and winter are full of single-product events, and they are genuinely local:

• The Acqualagna truffle fair runs across weekends from late October.
• Fossa cheese is unearthed around 25 November, with festivals at Talamello and Sogliano on the border.
• Olive mills open for the November pressing across the hills.

How eating works

• Lunch is the main meal inland, and kitchens close firmly from about 3pm to 7.30pm.
• Aperitivo is modest compared with the north — a drink and olives rather than a buffet.
• Brodetto is usually a two-person minimum and worth ordering ahead where possible.

Marche is a serious wine region that is poorly known outside Italy, and it is unusual in the centre of the country for being best at whites.

Verdicchio

Verdicchio is the region's great grape and among Italy's finest white varieties — capable of ageing for a decade or more, which very few Italian whites are. It has two homes.

• Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi, west of Ancona, is the larger zone, giving wines with a characteristic bitter-almond finish. The Riserva holds DOCG status.
• Verdicchio di Matelica, further inland in a valley running north-south rather than to the sea, is smaller, more mineral and more structured. Its Riserva is also DOCG.

The grape spent decades associated with a green amphora-shaped bottle sold cheaply abroad, which did its reputation lasting damage. The wine itself was never the problem.

Reds

Rosso Conero grows on the limestone of the Conero promontory, from the dark grape Abruzzo is best known for, with Conero Riserva holding DOCG status — firm and built for ageing. Rosso Piceno covers a much larger area to the south, blending that same grape with Sangiovese. Lacrima di Morro d'Alba DOC is an oddity worth trying: intensely floral, almost perfumed, and unlike anything else in the region.

The smaller denominations

Offida DOCG covers Pecorino and Passerina, two white grapes recovered from near-extinction in the 1980s; Pecorino in particular has become widely planted since. Vernaccia di Serrapetrona DOCG is a sparkling red made partly from dried grapes, produced almost nowhere else.

At the table

Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi with brodetto and moscioli; Verdicchio di Matelica with richer fish and with roast rabbit; Rosso Conero with lamb and aged cheese; Lacrima with charcuterie; Vernaccia di Serrapetrona with frustingo.