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avryan, I lived in Puglia in the 1980s and used to pay my electric bill in Ostuni. Well, every year or so. Times were different back then, and the power never got shut off for nonpayment.

I can't recommend a particular restaurant in that blinding-white town, but in general along the boot heel, think pasta and seafood. And fritelles.

I recall massive, sumptuous tables of anti-pasta that appeared to me to be breaking a restaurant's budget. Look for restaurants that proudly display their anti-pasta.

Pizza as an appetizer. That wasn't uncommon.

And the pasta. My Gawd, the pasta plates, with mussels or baby octopus, and black olives so tasty they'd bring tears of joy to your eyes.

Think sardines. But not the canned, oiled, who-knows-how-long-it's-been-on-the-grocery-store-shelf sardines.

There was a restaurant that baked cheese in the middle of a finished order of spaghetti marinara, and served it on a plate still wrapped in foil.

There were the bars that served a mandatory ($) plate of olives, raw onions and almonds with your shot of amaretto.

Try to hit a street market if you can. I last visited the region in 1996, when grocery stores (supermarkets) had appeared in Brindisi, and the rotating markets were dying off (don't know if they still exist), but prior to the supermarkets, most people bought most of their food once a week at the street market.

My small town had its market every Tuesday, from 0600 to 1400. From 20 kinds of olives, to scores of cheese, to bread, to cold cuts, to 10-litre jugs of olive oil, to dried fish, to chickens, to rather-drab looking (ie, non-dyed, non-factory-farmed) vegetables and fruits, to nuts, the whole village seemed to turn out and shop. Next day, the market would move lock-stock-and-barrel to the next village.

That's about it, unless you're lucky enough to travel to Lecce to see a beautiful Baroque city with a fun football team.