Somebody said that Italian are obsessed by food. I don’t think that this is the right word, since it gives a too negative impression. it is better to say that Italian are in love with food.
If you happened to have a dinner with italian friends, you know how they love food in a platonic manner. It seems like they like more speaking about food, even more than eating it. Somebody will recall the time that he tasted a truffle in Acqualagna, its birth place. Somebody else will explain how they use onions in Tropea, where red onions grow at their best. Love for food and for the places where food is produced is part of Italian culture. The best place where it is evident this love is a “sagra”, a party where we celebrate a particular food, its preparations and its producers. Nearly every village celebrates one or more sagras in a year. A sagra takes one day or more, sometimes more than a week. It attracts tourists from the nearby but not only. Different sagras are thousands, and each one as his favourite, just like political party and footbal team. So we can ride for hundreds of chilometres to join a sagra that celebrate an ingredient: “sagra of grapes”, “sagra of
potatoes”. We can celebrate a particular dish: “sagra della tigella”, “sagra dell’arancino”. We can also celebrate a typical place where to eat and drink, and join the overcrowed “sagra dei crotti”. Still haven’t decided? Choose the Sagra delle sagre (… sagra’s sagra?)! It’s not a joke. It exist and it’s also very famous.