Orecchiette in Puglia: The Pasta, the Street in Bari, the Scandal and Where to Make Your Own

The short version: orecchiette are made from semolina and water, shaped with a knife and a thumb, and eaten with cime di rapa; the women of Arco Basso in Bari Vecchia still make them in the street, but not everything sold there is what it seems, so the sure way to eat the real thing is to make it yourself at a farm in the Valle d’Itria or a kitchen in Bari. Below is the dish, the street, the 2025 scandal, and where to take a class.

The dish

Orecchiette, “little ears”, are Puglia’s pasta and one of the few in Italy still made without egg: durum semolina, warm water, salt, kneaded hard, rolled into ropes, cut into pieces, and each piece dragged across the board with a knife and flipped over the thumb to make a rough, cupped disc. The roughness is the point; it holds the sauce. The sauce is cime di rapa, turnip tops, boiled in the pasta water and finished with garlic, anchovy and chilli in oil. The second classic is ragù with braciole, the rolled beef of Sunday. In summer, fresh tomato and cacioricotta.

Arco Basso

In Bari’s old town a short street under an arch, Strada Arco Basso, is where the “pasta ladies” sit outside their doors at tables of drying orecchiette, shaping by hand and selling by the bag, as they have for generations. It is genuine, it is famous, and fame has done what it does. In 2019 the New York Times reported the “crime of pasta”, a police seizure after complaints about unlabelled sales; in February 2025 the Bari prosecutor opened a fraud investigation into industrial pasta being sold on the street as handmade. Some tables are exactly what they look like; some are not. Buy from a woman who is shaping in front of you, watch her hands for a minute, and expect to pay a few euros for a bag that will keep for a day.

Making your own

The class is the answer to the authenticity question, and it is also the best two hours in Puglia. The dough is easy; the shaping takes twenty minutes to understand and a season to do fast. Farm classes near Ostuni and Alberobello run three to four hours with lunch, olive oil from the grove and a glass of Primitivo, and often add a burrata or ricotta pulled by hand. Bari classes are shorter and cheaper and pair the orecchiette with focaccia barese. Polignano and Monopoli have courtyard classes a quarter of an hour from Bari by train; Lecce has them in old-town courtyards. Compare them on our Puglia cooking classes page and the Bari page.

What to eat around it

Focaccia barese with tomatoes and olives pressed into the dough, panzerotti fried to order, sgagliozze, the fried polenta squares, raw octopus at the fishing harbour, and taralli with a glass of Negroamaro rosato. A street-food tour of Bari Vecchia covers all of it in two and a half hours. Burrata comes from Andria, an hour inland, where it was invented in the 1920s; the masseria classes are where you will see it made.

Frequently asked questions

Are the orecchiette in Bari Vecchia handmade?

Many are; some sold there are not, which is what the 2025 investigation was about. Watch the shaping, or make your own.

What is the difference between orecchiette and other pasta?

No egg, just semolina and water, and a hand-shaped cup with a rough surface that holds the sauce.

What sauce goes with orecchiette?

Cime di rapa with garlic, anchovy and chilli is the classic; ragù with braciole on Sundays; tomato and cacioricotta in summer.

Where is the best orecchiette class in Puglia?

At a farm near Ostuni or Alberobello if you have a car; in Bari or Polignano if you are on the train line.

Is a Bari food tour worth it?

Yes; it is the most distinctive street food in the south and the tour ends at Arco Basso with a guide who knows which tables to trust.