Le Zie Trattoria Casereccia — Restaurant in Lecce

Italy means food and Puglia means amazing food.

After a hard day of exploring I parked the car in Lecce and started wandering on the streets, admiring the beauty of this little gem in Puglia.

For gourmands areas like Puglia are real treasures due to the fact that each part, each region of Puglia has special, traditional dishes, available in most cases only in that region.

Let’s start as usual with my main points of review and then I will give you my overall impression: • Location: the place is not central but not far from the old town. Now if I’d tell you that the place is located on Via Archimede Costadura 19 that wouldn’t mean much but if I’d tell you that you can easily reach it from the old town in about 5-6 minutes things would be more interesting. While the main entrance is small, the place is signaled ok so it is kind of hard to miss. • Staff: as with most Italian restaurants staff means one, two people tops smiling and joking, mixing English and Italian, gesturing and making themselves pleasant and making the clients feel good. This place gets a plus from me for the staff. • Food: while it was already late in the afternoon when I ate the first meal of that day I couldn’t sample many courses. So I settled with a few things, basic stuff, nothing fancy but local food, local dishes.

As you can see from the pictures i chose some antipasti and a pasta dish, a special kind of pasta and I’m happy to this day for my choice. While this is not the best pasta I have ever eaten it sure is in the top three places that I ever tasted pasta. It is simply amazing and as you can see from the picture it is a relatively simple, cheap dish. It is not something fancy, it is not something done with a lot of ingredients but it was delicious and after almost six months I can perfectly remember the taste of it. And this in my opinion makes for a great meal.

Many restaurants are flops, many restaurants are decent, many are quite good and they leave you satisfied but very few leave you wanting for more. Very few make you remember what you ate there a month or a year later. And this place is one of the places where you will certainly remember eating there.

Great restaurants make you remember their dishes for a long time. If somebody asks me “where should I eat a plate/bowl of pasta in Lecce?” I will remember and tell him of this place years from now. • Ambiance: this is your typical Italian joint. Small entrance, a small lobby and then the restaurant. Nothing fancy, nothing expensive. Everything looking as if it were there since the opening of the place. Yes, it is clean for those of you who wonder but it is not that sparkly clean that steals your eyes.

Simple white face covers with wooden chairs in a modest, homely interior.

And the best part? I was the only tourist there. As far as I could tell the rest of the place was filled by locals and as you know from my reviews that is of utter importance to me.

The walls, at least the wall in front of me, was covered in newspapers or magazines clips, showing the name of the restaurant and pictures of it. What drew my eye was a cover of a magazine, an Asian magazine (I’m so sorry now I didn’t take a picture) that had this place’s name on the cover and an article inside about it.

For those of you who are not faint of heart the menu contains special local dishes like horse meat and others so if anyone is curious they could certainly eat it there.

In my opinion this place symbolizes perfectly the meaning of cucina povera thru the delicious yet simple dishes that leave you wanting more.

Also as a bonus the place is cheap so when you eat here not only you will get something delicious but it will not make you feel robbed too and that is important as well.

As an end note if you ever visit Lecce give this place a try. I loved it and to be honest it ranks very high in my “best dishes eaten” category.

I am sure that no matter your food preferences, you will find something...

The concept of enjoying home-cooked food is an experience in itself, especially when it's served in a setting that feels like your grandmother's house. I had read many mixed reviews about Le Zie Trattoria, so I came with managed expectations, and I think that's important. Getting a table can indeed be difficult, but remember, this trattoria has only about 12 tables and operates with a small home-style kitchen.

Now, about the menu and food: again, it’s all about managing expectations. The menu focuses on traditional home-cooked dishes and old recipes, so don't expect typical Italian restaurant fare like pizza or spaghetti carbonara. For my starter, I had the parmigiana di melanzane, which was beautifully layered with just the right amount of meat and béchamel sauce. The taste was incredible. For the main course, I ordered the Tajeddra, a southern dish made with rice, potatoes, mussels, tomatoes, and courgettes. The flavors were spot on, though I personally felt the rice was a bit too runny and could have been drier, that’s just my opinion, as this may be how it’s traditionally prepared. To end the meal, I had the pasticciotto tarte, which was the highlight of the meal honestly indescribably good. One note: the restaurant may not be the best choice for...

Don't go if you're looking for good food. This is a tourist trap for visitors looking for a 'real' experience and who are prepared to sacrifice quality for a mistaken assumption of authenticity. Every single person in the room is a tourist, most of whom don't speak a word of Italian. The laminated menu in multiple languages and the efficiency and fluency of the (delightful) staff belie their facade of a cosy little home cooking kitchen - this is not a local restaurant but a very well-marketed business designed to part tourists with their money. The family are charming and the 'hidden' dining room is nice and cosy and traditional but the food is of poor quality and the wine is dire. We paid €60 for a meal I would have been disappointed to receive on an aeroplane. Some of the dishes, including a plate of boiled cabbage and a dish of what claimed to be roast lamb, were actually offensive - cheap ingredients cooked badly and sold at extortionate prices. There are far better places to eat in Lecce, and indeed in the...