The shop in the Itria Valley that ships bowler hats and gnumareddi throughout Italy, from which the capocollo champion salami factory was born. To go shopping and get advice from the best (real) stoves in Cisternino
The sign in the center of Cisternino reads Itria Carni and a phone number that almost makes you smile: there is not even the area code. It has been there since 1987, as the family's butcher shop Santoro, which started from here to build a small empire of the capocollo di Martina Franca. Today Salumificio Santoro is synonymous with capocollo, it serves the best starred restaurants in Italy and is even distributed by Harrods in London, churning out novelties such as Pancapocollo at Christmas and delicious artisan frankfurters. But their heart is that of butchers.
A futuristic butcher's shop
Giuseppe Santoro, born in 1963, is the progenitor of the dynasty and father of the two most social faces of the company, his daughters Angela and Micaela, aka @lesantorine. As a kid after school he worked as a boy in a butcher's shop in the town, and then finally at the age of 24 in 1987 he inaugurated his first butcher's shop: modern, minimal, with large exposed counters and a long counter. Together with his inseparable wife Piera, he dedicates himself to meat, beef but above all pork, in a land of pork butchery tradition. Today Giuseppe supervises the processing of the cured meat factory, while the family butcher shop is managed by Piera and his grandmother Angela, who prepares bowler hats and gnumareddi by hand that are shipped throughout Italy and as far as Milan in one of the outpost restaurants of the Apulian bowler, Torcinelli brothers. .
Of gnumareddi and paws
Gnumareddi, torcinelli, simply rolls, are another typical Apulian product. They are lamb casing rolls rolled around mixed offal such as heart, liver, lung, kidney and flavored with parsley or other spices. You can find them at the butcher's counter, but among the lesser known specialties, there is also the zampina, a sausage originating from Sammichele di Bari and widespread throughout the area. It is not made with the pig's leg, but takes its name from the “y” support on which it was cooked on a spit and is based on sheep meat, cheese, salt, pepper, but also tomato and basil. At the Macelleria Santoro it is kneaded by hand and sold fresh.
The bowler hats of Cisternino
The bombette are made with the same cut as the local cured meats, the capocollo, which in thin slices are rolled up on themselves and closed with a skewer. They are filled with Canestrato cheese, salt and pepper, and can be either smooth or breaded in breadcrumbs. It is they who are cooked in traditional stoves, which are not ovens or hobs, but traditional stone "fireplaces" in which the skewers are placed vertically. The mythical "stoves" that have become a local tourist attraction here are the very ones in which bowler hats are cooked, or should be. The stoves were a service of the local butchers who sold the cooked meat to take away to families who then consumed it at home, in aluminum trays.
Around Cisternino: the stoves where to go
The bowler hat as a tradition seems to have been born over 40 years ago in the Romanelli butcher's shop in Martina Franca, but now the kingdom of the bowler is Cisternino, full of restaurants where you can enjoy local meat. "In the nineties the Bar Fod organized a jazz festival in the square, Singing Stones, and the butcher Zio Pietro began to sell bowler hats as street food to those who listened to concerts. It all started a little by chance, "say Angela and Micaela Santoro. "After Uncle Pietro, the other two historic shops began to do so too, the Rosticceria De Mola (which no longer exists) and the Antico Borgo di Piero Menga". Today restaurants have sprung up all over the city, but not all of them have a real stove: "Many cook bowler hats on the grill or in the oven, as you would do at home, but that's something else entirely". For them, the bombette is eaten only if cooked in the traditional stove, slowly and letting the fat run out.