News Stories

The Los Angeles Times wrote extensively about Puglia on February 25, 2007.
The stories mention the Awaiting Table Italian Cooking School.  One brief story covers places to go in Puglia. Article excerpt: 

The Awaiting Table, Lecce, Silvestro Silvestori; www.awaitingtable.com . Classes on Pugliese cuisine taught in English at a 16th century palazzo in the historic heart of Lecce. Check the website for details — and for an exuberant introduction to the region and its cooking by the knowledgeable Silvestro Silvestori.

 The full article http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-tr-puglia25feb25 is available to registered users (registration is free).

 The second story is about the writer’s entire trip.  The photo on the web site is of Silvestro.  The full story is here:
http://travel.latimes.com/articles/article/la-tr-puglia25feb25?single_page=y

Article excerpt:

Traveling with three other people can make it difficult to plan ahead, and by the time I found a day to go south to Lecce to meet Silvestro Silvestori, who runs the cooking school the Awaiting Table there, it was late into our weeklong trip.

…..

Silvestori grew up in the United States but moved back to Puglia several years ago after earning degrees in jazz studies, sculpture and languages. He immersed himself in the region's traditions and became a leading expert in Pugliese cuisine. He lives and works in Lecce's old town in a palazzo that dates from the 16th century. A former stable is his teaching kitchen. Garlic and dried red peppers and little lanterns were strung from the rafters. At two big work tables, a group of women from Canada were busy shaping pasta into small sombreros by flattening it over the top of a wine bottle.

Silvestori collects recipes from grandmothers and the old ladies in the villages around Lecce and the Salentine peninsula to the south. Sometimes he invites guest teachers like Clifford Wright, who's written a number of books on Mediterranean cuisine, or Nancy Harmon Jenkins, who wrote "Flavors of Puglia."

He took a moment to demonstrate how to make the most basic Pugliese pasta, those adorable orecchiette . It's all in the gesture, he explained, how you roll the dough off your thumb. And nothing, quite frankly, you could learn from a cookbook.

That's the beauty and my regret. Sadly, we had no time to stay, and as we left, he walked us past the glorious honey-colored Baroque and Rococo buildings in the historic center. Wherever he went, the fishmonger, the baker, the woman who runs the bed-and-breakfast, called out a greeting.

It was a beguiling farewell to Puglia and just the right touch. I'm a romantic. I like to leave a place believing that I'll be back. Without that hope, it would be too wrenching to say goodbye to all the places I've fallen in love with over the years.

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