You know how you get into a routine when you are at home of going to the same places over and over again. We are like that a little bit when we travel, and Bari is no different. We have found one place in particular that we've been to for lunch or dinner six times in the 11 days we've been here. Not last night, and boy are we glad we went to La Cecchina, it was possibly the best meal we have had here in Italy. We heard it was a busy place so we got there a couple of minutes prior to them opening, and we were already third in the queue. By 8:30 the place was jammed. After finishing our dinner and leaving at 10:20 we knew why the place is busy. Our opening dish is one we've had before, Orecchiette al ragu con bracioletta which is the famous local pasta with braised meat in a ragu sauce which was outstanding. The chew of the pasta coupled with the rich sauce and the braised beef was outstanding. They did bring us the wrong first, initially they set down Misto Frito which looked outstanding and has us planning another trip to try that. No easy task to get the lovely K to try fish, especially away from home, so dinner was already a win in my mind. The Secondi we chose was Filetto de Maialino con fiche secchi, vincotto e gelato al parmigiana. Pretty wordy stuff for pork tenderloin with figs and a parmigiana gelato. The combination of all the contents of the dish was absolutely amazing. It's something we will try to copy when we get home, but I doubt we'll do it justice. The figsthemselves along with the Demi glacé, sage and the gelato were unbelievably good together along with perfectly cooked pork. Good thing we didn't discover the place the first night we got here, we would have missed out on so many other outstanding places. One of my workmates said the food on this side of Italy wasn't up to snuff compared to the west coast. I'd have to respectfully disagree, the food in Bari and Lecce have been amazingly fantastic. read more