Carrara gourmet tours

Itineraries for small and large groups, pairing the knowledge of the marble industry and the local food specialties.

Wine and food are the best memories of a place, they help you to remember more of the venues that you visited. This is true all over Italy, but even truer in Carrara where the marble industry influenced uses, customs and traditions throughout many centuries. 
Eat and drink local, savor the traditional dishes of the quarry-men, will be the way to customize the Carrara civilization of marble tour.

Our programs take place in the area of Carrara, they are individuals and people traveling by motor-coach. They aim to matching the knowledge of this territory (methods of the marble excavation, geology, history of Carrara) together with the genuine flavors of its cuisine that matches land and sea dishes accompanied by the local white and red wines.

Highlights

• Explore the marble quarries and savor local specialties.
• Itineraries suitable for small and large groups.
• Wine and food tasting walking tours.
• Meals in local eateries based on local dishes.
• Receptions and light lunches inside the marble quarries.
• Visit of a local wine farm with light lunch opportunity.

Itineraries

We are always available to customize a half or a full day tour with a local food experience, for example:

• Carrara old town walking tour and food tasting
• Marble quarries tour with light lunch inside a marble quarry
• Marble quarries tour with lunch in Colonnata.
• Carrara town center and marble quarries tour with lunch in a local restaurant.
• Marble quarries and light lunch/wine tasting in a local wine farm.

Carrara’s food specialties.

Despite its location very close to the sea, Carrara developed traditional dishes leaning more towards the land cuisine because the excavation of marble has been much more important than fishing. So traditional meals are more associated with the quarry-men work and coming from agriculture, cattle sheep and pigs, with some intrusion of fish-seafood based dishes.

What Carrara area is known for is the Lardo di Colonnata (Protected by the Slow Food) it’s pork’s back-fat cured and aged in marble basins.  Colonnata is the quarry-men village where people have been making lardo in the same way for 1500 years. There are plenty of eateries (larderie) where they make their own lardo and serve it together with local cheeses, cold cuts and wines.

Beside the lardo, other typical dishes are: pasta e fagioli (pasta and beans); tordelli (stuffed ravioli with meat and vegetables); lasagne stordellate (pasta with a sort of meat and vegetable sauce); several types of vegetable pies and omelettes; polenta with porcini mushrooms that grow nicely inside the local chestnut woods; lasagne bastarde (chestnuts pasta made of  50% wheat flour and 50% chestnut flour);  chicken or rabbit alla cacciatora with polenta (meat with tomato sauce, black olives and corn polenta); roasted or fried lamb chops, baccalà (cod fish fried and marinated); stock-fish and potatoes (stockfish stew); 

The traditional dessert is Torta di Riso (rice cake) milk, eggs, and a touch of rice.  Each village or neighborhood of Carrara proudly preserves its “authentic recipe” of the Torta di Riso; another cake is the castagnaccio (a type of chestnut cake with pine nuts and raisin) served with ricotta cheese.

For a snack don’t leave out to strive the local street food this is Farinata (chickpea flan), or the local focaccia often filled of farinata or other cold cuts.

Wines are both red and white and are made on the hills surrounding Carrara: Candia Hills wines and Luni Hills wines, both of them DOC wines that easily match the foods mentioned above.