Skip to content
MASA
Food

What to Eat in Matera, Dish by Dish

Matera, ItalyMarch 6, 20252 min read
By MASA Editors
ShareWhatsAppXFacebook
Strings of dried red peppers hanging over a food market stall in Matera, Italy, with crates of dried peppers, nuts and dried fruit spread out below01
Strings of dried red peppers hanging over a food market stall in Matera, Italy, with crates of dried peppers, nuts and dried fruit spread out belowPhoto: Josefina Di Battista / Unsplash

Bread with a protected pedigree, peppers that shatter like glass, and pasta shaped by hand in cave kitchens: the dish-led guide to eating in Italy's ancient stone city.

Matera's food tells the same story as its cave houses: poverty turned into genius. Basilicata's cucina povera, the cooking of scarcity, built a cuisine from durum wheat, legumes, wild greens and sun-dried peppers, and in the restored Sassi districts it is now served by candlelight in dining rooms carved from rock. Here is what to order, dish by dish.

Key facts

  • Region: Basilicata, southern Italy, near the border with Puglia
  • Best months: April to June and September to October
  • Where to focus: trattorias and cave restaurants in the Sassi and around the central Piazza Vittorio Veneto
  • Budget: honest southern prices; even celebrated cave restaurants cost less than a mid-range dinner in Rome

Pane di Matera

Start with the city's most famous product: Pane di Matera, the golden, horn-shaped durum-wheat bread with protected IGP status, baked in wood-fired ovens using natural yeast. The crust is thick and dark, the crumb yellow and honeycombed, and it famously keeps for a week or more, a legacy of shepherds carrying loaves into the hills. Buy it from one of the historic bakeries in the old town and eat it with local olive oil.

Peperoni cruschi

Basilicata's signature: sweet red peppers of the Senise variety, sun-dried and flash-fried until they shatter like glass. They arrive crumbled over pasta, or whole as a snack with a pinch of salt. Once you start, stopping is not realistic.

Three rustic crusty artisan loaves with floured, cracked crusts arranged with wheat stalks on a dark dusted surface
Three rustic crusty artisan loaves with floured, cracked crusts arranged with wheat stalks on a dark dusted surface

Cavatelli and orecchiette with cime di rapa

Hand-formed durum pasta is the daily staple, dressed simply: cavatelli with tomato and cruschi, or orecchiette with bitter turnip tops, garlic and chili, a dish shared with neighboring Puglia. Many Sassi trattorias still roll the pasta in-house each morning.

Cialledda

The bread comes back as salad: cialledda, stale Matera bread revived with tomatoes, cucumber, onion, oregano and oil, is summer in a bowl. A warm winter version adds egg and turnip greens. It is the definitive cucina povera dish.

Crapiata

A humble, ancient stew of mixed legumes and grains, wheat, chickpeas, lentils, beans, traditionally cooked communally in the Sassi to celebrate the harvest in early August. When it appears on menus, order it; it tastes of the city's whole history.

Weathered hands sorting fresh red chillies in a wicker basket, ready to be strung into the long drying braids of Italian tradition
Weathered hands sorting fresh red chillies in a wicker basket, ready to be strung into the long drying braids of Italian traditionPhoto: Francesca Magurno / Unsplash

Cheese and meat from the Murgia

The high pastures around Matera supply caciocavallo podolico, a prized cheese from free-ranging Podolica cows, along with sharp pecorino and salsiccia lucanica, the local sausage so old that Romans wrote about it. Antipasto boards in the Sassi lean heavily, and happily, on all three.

What to drink

Aglianico del Vulture, from vineyards on an extinct volcano to the west, is Basilicata's great structured red and the natural partner for the region's food. Local Matera DOC wines cover the lighter end.

Tip: Book a cave-restaurant dinner for your first night, but save one lunch for a simple bakery picnic: fresh Pane di Matera, oil, tomatoes and cruschi, eaten on a Sassi terrace overlooking the ravine, is the meal you will remember longest.

Still wandering?

Scroll the world one photograph at a time

Sixty places, each with the one fact worth knowing before you go

Open the feed
Same place, another angle

More from Matera

The church of San Pietro Caveoso and its bell tower perched on the edge of the Gravina ravine in Matera
01
The List

Beyond the Sassi: the best day trips from Matera

Matera sits on the hinge between Basilicata and Puglia, which puts a town of cone-roofed trulli, a Bond bridge, an evacuated ghost town and two different seas all within ninety minutes of the Sassi.

Italy · 11 min
The stone houses of Matera's Sassi stacked across the hillside under a blue sky, with a tall bell tower on the ridge
02
Itineraries

Matera in 24 hours for the time-poor

Matera is small enough to see in a day and vertical enough to punish a badly planned one — here is the hour-by-hour order that works, with what to book ahead, what to skip, and roughly what the day costs.

Italy · 12 min
Matera's Sassi glowing at sunset, framed through the mouth of a rock-cut cave
03
Stays

Sleeping well in Matera, from cave luxury to the town above

Candlelit cave suites, restored palazzi and sensible rooms on the plateau: how to choose your Sasso — and your budget — in Europe's most atmospheric hotel city.

Italy · 2 min
Keep exploring

More in Food

A ramen bowl seen from above with thin noodles, soft-boiled egg halves, sweetcorn, spicy minced topping and fresh greens in a speckled ceramic bowl
01
Food

The Tokyo Street Food Guide: From Ramen to Taiyaki

Tokyo's finest eating happens at standing counters, market stalls and six-seat alley bars — here is how to plan a full day of it, in the right order and the right neighbourhoods.

Japan · 10 min
A classic Neapolitan margherita with melted mozzarella, tomato sauce and fresh basil leaves on a marble table
02
Food

Where to Eat Real Pizza in Naples: The Complete Guide

Naples invented pizza and still sets the terms: which ovens matter, in what order to visit them, what it costs, when the city works, and which queues are worth standing in.

Italy · 12 min
Two flat whites with latte art and a berry-topped pastry served on a wooden board
03
Food

Coffee, cinnamon buns and people-watching in Reykjavik

Iceland runs on coffee and pastry. From sourdough bakeries to harborside café windows, here is how to do Reykjavik's kaffi culture like a local.

Iceland · 2 min
Plov: spiced rice with meat and dried fruit on a platter, Azerbaijan
04
Food

Saffron, Smoke and Sour Plum: Eating Baku From the City Wall Outward

Baku's cooking gets cheaper, better and more local the further you walk from the Maiden Tower, and this is the route outward, from the caravanserai courtyards to the nine-hour lamb of Narimanov and the fish shacks of the Absheron.

Azerbaijan · 10 min
The Peveril of the Peak, a green-tiled Victorian pub standing alone on its corner in Manchester
05
Food

Where to Eat in Manchester, Neighbourhood by Neighbourhood

A food hall in a Victorian market building, a curry mile that has fed the city for fifty years, and the bakery queue that tells you where Ancoats really eats. What to order and, more usefully, where to walk to find it.

United Kingdom · 5 min
An afternoon tea stand of scones and cakes, Bath
06
Food

The Abbey Is Not Where Bath Eats

A neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood map of eating in Bath, from the sourdough end of Walcot Street to the French bistro up in Larkhall, with what to order in each.

United Kingdom · 10 min