Fratelli De Palo Bakery: Panzerotti and Pizza in Matera
An invitation to "grab lunch at the bakery" would sound like a joke back home in Czechia. In Matera it's a perfectly sensible plan: alongside their bread, the local bakeries fry and bake so much ready-to-eat food that they double as a lunch spot.
Panificio Fratelli De Palo is one of the historic bakeries of Matera: an Italian bakery with a counter full of pizza, panzerotti and focaccia, with somewhere to sit - and with the bread the city is famous for. It's a long way from the Sassi, in the modern part of town, where tourists rarely wander - unless they come in by bus from Bari airport, the way I did.
The Brothers Nobody Names
Fratelli means brothers, so the name promises a family story. The bakery is tight-lipped about that story, though: by its own account it has been baking since the 1920s and ranks among the very first bakeries in the city, but neither its own publicity nor local sources give the founding brothers' first names - all you get is the surname and the phrase "from generation to generation". They aren't the only ones in town with that surname, either: Pane e Tradizione De Palo on the main shopping street is a different business, so don't let the coincidence throw you. Another list says more about where this bakery stands: the consortium that protects Pane di Matera brings together four historic bakeries in the city - and Fratelli De Palo is one of them, alongside the Perrone bakery, Cifarelli and Antico Forno Pane e Pace. In a city where a hundred years ago families were still taking loaves they had proofed at home to the communal oven, that's practically a title of nobility.
A Counter You Can Build a Lunch From
The word panificio means bakery, but the display case speaks a different language: next to the loaves sit tray pizza, stuffed focaccia, fried panzerotti, arancini, taralli and, in the morning, cornetti to go with your coffee. At Fratelli De Palo they'll heat your food up if you ask, and there are plenty of seats, which isn't a given even in Italy. As in similar places around Italy, you pay afterwards at a central register - a system that trusts you to own up to everything you ate at the counter.
Nearly all the stars here come from somewhere else. Panzerotto, a fried pocket of pizza dough, was born in Bari and reached Matera from Apulia. Focaccia barese is a different case: Apulia and the province of Matera have both always baked it, and it pays no attention to the regional border. Arancini are an outright import from Sicily. The only local in the lineup is Pane di Matera, the bread with the European IGP mark: a craggy durum wheat loaf with a dark crust - and it's the easiest thing in the case to miss, because unlike the pizza it doesn't glisten. A city of bread doesn't put its bread on show; it takes it for granted.
Panzerotto to Eat In, Pizza to Take Away
I head to Fratelli De Palo on every visit to Matera, even though a spot this far from the center isn't somewhere you drop by often; but if you come into the city by bus, straight from Bari airport for instance, it's practically on your way. Last time I ate in: a freshly fried panzerotto coated in breadcrumbs and a big arancino filled with ragù bolognese. The crumb coating was crunchy, the hot cheese inside stretched into strings and the arancino would have made a lunch on its own.
To take away I had them wrap a slice of pizza with friarielli and sausage, a slice with tomatoes and olives and a piece of focaccia; the whole lot came to 10 EUR. Nobody there speaks English, and I've always managed anyway - you would be hard pressed to find friendlier service in Matera. And when I paid, they slipped a small loaf of Matera bread into the bag for free. I didn't buy the best calling card a city of bread has - I was given it.
Panificio Fratelli De Palo
