Itinerary for a Cruise Around Italy: Get hands-on cooking experience in some of Italy’s most famous dishes
Silversea offers the best extra food excursions by ship.
At Pepe in Grani Franco Pepe and his small team made 700 pizzas per day in Caiazzo, just 45 minutes from Naples. They knead approximately 550 pounds of dough each day by hand, making them six days a weeks. Pepe is Italy’s most revered pizzaiolo, and his restaurant draws visitors from all over the world. They line up for an hour or more for soft-yet-chewy-yet-crisp rounds of blistered sourdough This was possible through his unique approach to fermentation. Pepe is well-known for his creative, playful approach to pizza. He can play with flavors and textures and transform a seemingly simple staple into an art form.
The restaurant is not open for lunch, so it’s a rare treat indeed to find myself at Pepe’s counter for a noontime pizza. I’m one of just eight lucky people partaking in an intimate salon he hosts a handful of times a year inside Authentica, a private space on the top floor of the restaurant.
“Today, I’m showing you something simple and at the same time incredibly complex,” Pepe explains to our small group. He spends the next two hours turning out pizzas in different styles, starting with a light, airy deep-fried version topped with fresh tomato, anchovy, and lemon zest — a taste, he says, of “Italian summers by the sea.” It’s followed by his signature Margherita Sbagliata, an interplay of hot dough and molten buffalo mozzarella topped with a contrast of cold tomato passata and basil–olive oil pesto to accentuate the richness of the cheese, as well as my favorite pizza: a pie topped with a cream of caramelized onion and scattered with crispy chickpeas, fried onion, and fresh, wild chicory, a satisfying symphony of sweetness, crunch, and bitterness.
It’s an incredible demonstration in pizza makingThis was made even more special by the fact that my seven companions had just been to Il Casolare, the dairy that makes custom buffalo mozzarella for Pepe In Grani, hours earlier. You might have seen it in Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy.Mimmo Lavecchia, its gregarious owner, took us on a private tour of her kitchen, showing us how mozzarella curds were made. They are separated from the milk, melted in a hot bath, shaped and brined. We tried the fresh, chewy, milky mozzarella before digging a spoon into a container of still-warm ricotta made from the whey — a creamy spoonful of sunshine I have not been able to stop thinking about since. Having the mozzarella on Pepe’s pizzas later that day underscored a true taste of place. (In fact, all the restaurant’s ingredients, from the tomatoes and the chickpeas to the onions, come from the surrounding valley.)
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This bespoke experience is made possible by Silversea’s culinary program, S.A.L.T. Adam Sachs, a former magazine editor and writer on food and travel, directs Sea and Land Taste. He leverages his relationships with food and wine professionals to organize intimate and exclusive trips for groups of 8-12 guests. S.A.L.T. S.A.L.T. is available on two of Silversea’s ships, Silver Dawn Silver Moon along with an interactive cooking school known as the Lab and a bar and kitchen with a daily-changing menu that showcases regional tastes reflecting each ship’s itinerary.
Sachs engages former Food & Wine Italia editor in chief, cookbook author, and bread expert Laura Lazzaroni to curate the shore excursions in her native Italy, where I’ve joined a few hundred guests on board the Dawn, In just over a week, I was able to sail from Bari to Rome around the heel of Italy. I also signed up for five S.A.L.T. The days that follow are filled with stunning scenery and delicious tastes. On the scrubby plains of the Murge plateau in Puglia, I forage for wild cardoon thistles, blackberries, almonds, savory, and mint on an outing led by the charismatic 76-year-old mustachioed “Ciccillo” (a nickname for Francesco), who has been foraging here since he was 9 years old. I smell the wild carrot flowers’ nutmeg-like fragrance and take fresh and bitter almonds from a tree. Lunch is at the nearby Agriturismo Tenuta Tedone Consolini and is cooked by chef brothers Francesco and Vincenzo Montaruli, who use Ciccillo’s finds on the menu of their vegetarian restaurant Mezza Pagnotta inside the charming Villa Fenicia in the hills behind Bari. Vincenzo slow braises cardoon thistles and onions in a clay pot on a Big Green Egg, before adding egg yolks to give them a delightful twist on carbonara. I enjoy sitting in the shade while enjoying the delicious cardoons and elderflower lemonade.
In Sicily, we’re hosted by Benjamin North Spencer, author of The New Wines of Mount Etna The Benanti family has been making Sicilian wine since 1734. He leads us through the volcanic soil and crunchy black volcanic soil. After tasting a minerally Carricante in a breezy stone gazebo overlooking the ocean, we repair to the Benantis’ ridiculously gorgeous 19th-century estate for a lunch of donkey mortadella, antipasti, and pasta in a room decorated with imposing oil paintings, candelabras, and an antique palmento winepress based on the designs of Pliny the Elder.
In Palermo, we stroll through the Mercato di Ballarò marveling at enormous cucuzza (similar to zucchini) and spirited vendors playing European techno to draw attention to their grilled stigghiole (sheep’s intestine wrapped around a scallion and grilled over hot coals), before driving out to the wine estate of Sallier de La Tour. The charismatic Costanza Chirivino, who manages the estate (and whose family has been making wine for eight generations), cooks us lunch, including artisanal pasta by Feudo Mondello—whose owners, Nina and Alberto Agosta, join us. The Agostas grow and mill their own wheat to create the most flavorful, textural pasta; it’s so good, French chef Alain Ducasse had his secretary ring the Agostas for a tour of their farm last October. Nina says she told the secretary: “I don’t know; I’m very busy,” a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she recalls the conversation.
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In Sorrento, our final stop, we pick eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, and squash blossoms in the organic garden of chef Peppe Guida (the “pasta whisperer,” according to Lazzaroni) in his villa overlooking Vesuvius and the Sorrentine Peninsula. We enjoy savory limoncello cocktails while we wait for our turn to make squash-blossom fritters. This includes peppers stuffed full of mozzarella and tomato, eggplant Parmesan and bombas filled with dark chocolate cream, sweetened ricotta, and eggplant Parmesan. On the veranda overlooking the peninsula, we eat everything we cooked and then some, including Guida’s signature spaghettino with lemon-infused water, Provolone del Monaco, and dried lemon leaves.
And just when I think the setting, the food, and the view can’t be any more magical, there’s a chance meeting with Guida’s mother, Rosa, in her “office” out back, peeling eggplant to preserve in oil. “No one is usually allowed back here,” says Guida. “She’s going to give me hell later,” he adds with a chuckle. The moment beautifully reinforces the other joyful aspect of this trip built around food: the people we’ve met along the way. Because the simple act of sharing their philosophy, hospitality, knowledge, and passion is ultimately what gave the trip its richness and complexity, much like one of Franco Pepe’s pizzas.
Silversea’s S.A.L.T. Explore the world starting at $149 silversea.com