Food and Wine

Parma is the capital of the Italian "food valley", the home of good cuisine and excellent wines.

Its most famous products are Dop Prosciutto di Parma, Dop Culatello di Zibello (culatello is a special kind of ham), Dop Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, Salame di Felino, the renowned Igp Boletus mushrooms (porcini) from the Taro valley, Igt Fortana del Taro wine and Fragno truffles (tartufi).

• 
• 
• 
• 

But these are only the most well known products. In and around Parma extremely rare homemade salami can be found, such as prete (literally, "priest"), which is similar to zampone (stuffed pig's trotter) and is produced in the Colorno area. Other examples are strolghino, a kind of salami, or gola (pig's throat), which is top-quality pork lard left to mature on a wooden plank until it becomes pink with streaks of lean meat.

Thinly sliced gola is eaten on hot bread. The typical products of the lowlands around Parma are culatello and a mild, egg-shaped salami called Spalla di San Secondo, which was much appreciated by Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio.

There are so many local dishes that it is impossible to give a full list of them here, but typical menus include several shapes of pasta or rice with savoury fillings (anolini, tortelli with a beet or pumpkin filling, rice patties with a pigeon meat filling), meat (stew, boiled meat, and ground horse meat), and several kinds of desserts (which show a distinctive French and Austrian influence).