7 places I recommend
These are the seven restaurants and bakeries in the Puglia Region I have eaten at myself and would recommend.
An osteria on Via Cesare Battisti in central Lecce, cooking the food of the Salento: fresh pasta, pulses, and vegetables alongside the day's fish. One of the best meals I had in Puglia. I actually went twice.
Address: Via Cesare Battisti, 4, 73100 Lecce LE, Italy
An osteria in the old centre of Ostuni, open since 1983 in a sixteenth-century cave that once held a bakery's oven, with a second room in the granary that fed it, cooking Apulian dishes.
Address: Via Gaetano Tanzarella Vitale, 47, 72017 Ostuni BR, Italy
An osteria on Via Cattedrale in the white old town of Ostuni, a few steps from the cathedral, cooking Apulian staples.
Address: Via Cattedrale, 8, 72017 Ostuni BR, Italy
A seafood restaurant on Largo Gelso in Polignano a Mare, a few streets back from the cliffs, serving raw fish, lobster and seafood pasta under a vaulted ceiling. Great place with simple local seafood dishes that are delicious and fresh.
Address: Largo Gelso, 6, 70044 Polignano a Mare BA, Italy
A family trattoria behind the port in Monopoli, in what were the stables of a palazzo, with a dining room barely changed in fifty years and a menu built on the day's catch. The best meal I had in Puglia. Simple seafood dishes cooked very well.
Address: Via Orazio Comes, 1, 70043 Monopoli BA, Italy
A pasticceria on Via Salvatore Trinchese in Lecce, known for the pasticciotto, the local custard-filled pastry, and for a gelato counter running to about fifty flavours.
Address: Via Salvatore Trinchese, 7, 73100 Lecce LE, Italy
The Alberobello branch of Martinucci, a Salento pasticceria that grew out of the marriage of a travelling ice cream maker and a baker's daughter in 1950 and did much to spread the pasticciotto beyond Lecce. Gelato is made on the premises. One of the best gelatos I've had in Italy.
Address: Via Monte S. Michele, 57, 70011 Alberobello BA, Italy
