Here are some journalistic interest points about The Awaiting Table Cookery School, Terronia, The New Wine School of Southern Italy and the food and wines of the Salento for the media and bloggers to use as content. When writing about Silvestro or The Awaiting Table Cookery School, please be sure to link back to the home page of this site: https://awaitingtable.com/

    About the Awaiting Table Cookery School in Lecce, Italy:

    • The Awaiting Table Cookery School is Puglia’s oldest cooking school still in existence.
    • The Awaiting Table Cookery School in Lecce, Italy, opened in 2003, and has been praised in Bon Appetit, Wine & Spirits, Food & Wine, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, Travel + Leisure and magazines and newspapers from 6 countries. 
    • The second, larger location was added in 2008, in a castle an hour south of Lecce.
    • Between the two schools, The Awaiting Table has had students from 59 different countries. 
    • The school’s owner and/or the school have appeared on Dutch, Belgian, Chinese, British, Australian and American television.
    • The school’s owner Silvestro Silvestori, is a nationally certified Italian sommelier (AIS 2010).
    • On occasion Silvestro teaches university classes in Italy. He’s also a bonded lecturer for the region of Puglia. 
    • The school now teaches preventive health medicine through diet to physicians from all over the world. 

    About the region of Puglia, the Salento and the city of Lecce:

    • Puglia is the number one domestic (here in Italy) tourist destination. It is simply where those that live on the peninsula choose to holiday.
    • The Salento is famous for having the best beaches and coastline in all of Italy. The region is also famous for its style of cooking, which is considered the most healthful in all of Italy.
    • The food and wines of the Salento are protected by UNESCO, with the so-called Mediterranean Diet, now considered as a global cultural treasure. Most cultures that surround the Mediterranean though, don’t actually consume The Mediterranean Diet, a misleading term to be sure.
    • Lecce is a city in Southern Puglia, the region that makes up Italy’s ‘heel’.
    • Lecce is considered one of the prettiest cities in Italy, and Italian school children visit the city as part of the Italian education each year.
    • Although the city of Lecce has three thousand years of recorded history, most of the city was radically rebuilt during the 1600’s, rendering the city with the most pristine example of baroque architecture in all of Italy. ‘Stunningly beautiful’ is a common comment.
    • Few foreigners know this, but most of Italy did not historically eat pasta. Here in the Salento (the Southern part of Puglia) pasta has been a widely consumed for 1,200 years.
    • Eleven communities just south of Lecce, still today speak an ancient form of Greek.

    The Food and Wine of Italy’s Salento region:

    • The principle red wine grapes of the Salento are, Negroamaro (from Latin and Greek, ‘negro’ for black, and ‘mavros’, or Greek for ‘black’).
    • Primitivo, an early or ‘prima’, ripening grape, that is the genetic clone of California’s red zinfandel.
    • Susumaniello, an ancient Roman grape that was brought back into commercial relevance in the last ten years.
    • The principle white wine grapes of the region are verdeca, fiano and fiano minutolo. White wine makes up a tiny fraction of the grapes grown in the Salento.
    • The pasta of the Salento is made without eggs. It contains about 65% hard durum wheat flour, and 35% barley flour, rendering the pasta a dark, nutty brown colour. Less refined, it tends to cause less insulin spikes.
    • The Salento has recently lost 7 million olive trees to a blight and the region is in the early stages of replanting all trees for oil and grafting older trees as cultural treasures. 

    About Terronia: The New Wine School of Southern Italy:

    • The Awaiting Table launched its wine programme called Terronia: The New Wine School of Southern Italy, in 2011, limiting its students to 100 a year. It teaches the wine of the same regions as Silvestro’s bicycle trips.
    • Silvestro bicycles Southern Italian wine country for 2 months every year to research Southern Italian Wine (Sicily, Calabria, Basilicata and La Puglia). He blogs extensively about his journey and his findings.
    • Silvestro is a wine journalist, writing magazine feature articles for Wine & Spirits Magazine.
    • Silvestro has been working on a television series about Southern Italian wine. 

    Silvestro Silvestori is available for interviews. If you would like to reach him, please send an email to ssilvestori@awaitingtable.com.

     In addition, he is available for hire as a lecturer, culinary photographer, wine writer or filmmaker