Lecce Food Tours & Cooking Classes
Lecce is the baroque capital of the Salento, Puglia’s heel, and its food is its own: pasticciotto custard pastries, rustici, caffè leccese with almond milk, and the Negroamaro and Primitivo wines of the plain around it. Compare the top-rated food tours and classes below, then read our notes.
Formats: street food walks with wine through the baroque centre; food-and-sightseeing tours; underground Lecce tours with tastings; orecchiette and dessert classes in old-town courtyards; vineyard walks and tastings on the edge of town.
What you will taste: pasticciotto, rustico leccese, puccia bread, ciceri e tria with fried pasta, orecchiette, pittule fritters, caffè leccese, and Negroamaro rosato.
Price and time: roughly 50 to 80 dollars for a two-to-three-hour tour or class.
Lecce’s food
Start with the pasticciotto, a short-pastry shell filled with custard, invented in Galatina in 1745 and eaten warm for breakfast; the rustico, a puff-pastry disc with béchamel, mozzarella and tomato, is the mid-morning snack. Caffè leccese is espresso over ice with almond syrup. Lunch is ciceri e tria, chickpeas with fresh pasta of which a third is fried, or orecchiette; puccia is the bread stuffed like a sandwich. Pittule are fried dough balls for the evening with a glass of rosato.
Tours and classes
Street food tours walk the baroque centre, Piazza del Duomo, Santa Croce, the Roman amphitheatre, with five or six tastings and wine, in two and a half hours. Cooking classes run in old courtyards from the 1400s and teach orecchiette and a dessert, often the pasticciotto itself. On the edge of town a vineyard walk with tasting is the introduction to Salento wine; for the full day, see Puglia wine tours.
Getting there
Lecce is about an hour and a half from Bari by train and 150 kilometres by road; Polignano and the Valle d’Itria are an hour and twenty minutes by car. It is the base for Otranto, Gallipoli and the Salento beaches.
Frequently asked questions
What is Lecce famous for, food-wise?
The pasticciotto above all, then rustico, caffè leccese and the Salento’s Negroamaro wines.
Is a Lecce food tour worth it?
Yes; the centre is compact, the food is unlike the rest of Italy and the tours combine it with the baroque architecture well.
Can I take a cooking class in Lecce?
Yes, in old-town courtyards; orecchiette and a dessert in about three hours, with wine.
How we choose
We list only experiences with a strong rating over a meaningful number of reviews and free cancellation where available, and we favour small-group and family-run hosts. FindEatLocal earns a commission when you book through GetYourGuide or Viator links on this page; it doesn’t change the price you pay. More about how we choose.