Ask where burrata comes from and most people will say Puglia. Fewer will name the precise spot: Andria, in the triangular Barletta-Andria-Trani (BAT) province of northern Puglia, an area foreign tourists tend to skip. That's their loss — and increasingly everyone else's discovery.
The origin story is a happy accident. Around a century ago, a farmer near Andria named Lorenzo Bianchino was snowed in and unable to get his milk to market. To salvage it, he revived an old butter-preservation method, stuffing cream and mozzarella scraps into a casing of stretched curd. Burrata was born.
At Andria's best-known dairy, Caseificio Olanda, second-generation cheesemaker Riccardo 'Dino' Olanda still does it by hand: near-boiling water into the curds, then stretching and kneading until the mass turns shiny. Fresh mozzarella balls, knots and plaits come first; burrata follows, worked into a hollow pouch, filled with cream and stracciatella, and tied with string. Demos, tastings and a small museum are on offer — and the cheese genuinely tastes different here, elastic and umami-rich, a hard act to follow at any supermarket counter.
The eating doesn't stop there. In Barletta, a palm-lined beach town with a Norman castle and a lively old quarter of seven parallel streets known as the sette strade, Portento serves local antipasti — grilled caciocavallo from a couple who make just six a week, small-batch salami — before pizzas topped with sausage, oyster mushrooms and yellow tomatoes. In Cerignola, home of the plum-sized bella di Cerignola olive, U' Vulèsce turns out prawn tartare in sea urchin shells and hairy crab spaghetti. In the Alta Murgia national park, Masseria Barbera grows 90% of what its 100-cover restaurant serves, including — surprisingly memorably — grilled donkey fillet, a lean, traditional meat the writer calls the best they've ever tasted.
Between meals there's more than enough: the De Nittis painting collection in Barletta's 16th-century Palazzo della Marra (€6), Europe's largest salt pan at Margherita di Savoia with its climbable white salt mountain, and ebike rides through Alta Murgia forest to an old bauxite quarry that looks like a miniature canyon. Olive oil fans can tour Sabino Leone's ancient groves for €15, or pick up organic oil in Muraglia's rainbow-striped hand-painted ceramic bottles.
Sleep options are still limited but characterful: Antica Dimora, a restored 17th-century palazzo in Barletta with doubles from €97, or Lama di Luna, a self-sufficient organic farm deep in the countryside from €230 a night, its pool shaded by 600-year-old olive trees.
For travellers who plan holidays around the plate, the BAT province hits a sweet spot: serious food culture without the crowds of Bari or the Salento, a real working coastline where fishing boats still land octopus and skate at 7am, and prices that undercut Italy's better-known food destinations. The trip featured was arranged by Unexpected Italy, which builds personalised itineraries for the area.