Today on Food on Fridays we look where to find some typical finger foods in Italy.

As I mentioned in a previous post, french fries don’t count as finger foods in Italy. But not to worry: you have a wide variety of other foods to eat with you fingers every day, and many served free of charge. I’m talking about the snacks that are served free of charge along with an alcoholic drink in a bar in Italy. I.e., if you go to a bar and order a glass of wine, or an aperitivo (cocktail), or a glass of beer, or really anything alcoholic, you will get at least a small bowl of  some type of food to accompany it.  It might be a few potato chips, or a few small slices of bread topped with something, or perhaps a few little meat balls, or perhaps some crunchy bread sticks, or tiny square of pizza cut up, etc.  Mostly the free snacks only accompany the drink after 6pm, which is traditionally the start of the aperitivo hour, I guess.

Now there are a few wine bars that don’t tend to give anything for free at all, but rather offer tiny sandwiches for purchase. I never really figured out how to predict this in advance, as most places would offer a little something. A wine shop in Bolzano had a little area where you could get wines by the glass, and they offered no free munchies, but always had a plate of freshly made tiny sandwiches on hand for purchase to go with your glass of wine.

We actually ran into that same system in a small bar in Verona on this past trip.  It’s a place where the clientel was mainly locals;  we wound up there on the recommendation of one of workers at our hotel. It was tiny, with perhaps  4 tables plus a side counter with stools. They sold bottles of wine, but also had many wines by the glass, and mostly there were no free snacks, although there were the little sandwiches for purchase. We never did try those, as the one night when we decided we needed a snack before drinking wine on an empty stomach, the bartender unexpectedly gave us a small bowl of taralli to go with our glasses of wine.

Italian Taralli

Note that this photo of taralli is an old one I took several years ago; I wasn’t going to blow my cover as a tourist trying to blend in at this little locals wine bar by whipping out my camera just to take a new photograph of taralli. Trust me, the ones we had last month looked like the ones in my old photo. 😉

Now, in my Life on a Gelato Diet book, I mention how the cafe at the Hotel Città in Bolzano was the place that had the best free snacks.  Ordering any kind of aperitivo at that cafe would bring along with it a plateful of assorted and tasty treats far beyond the typical bowl of potato chips. While there is one small chain of bar/cafes in Verona that offer a buffet selection with an aperitivo, we hadn’t run into anything like the Hotel Città assortment Verona. But on our last trip, we tried a new place in Verona, where it took 3 trips by the wait staff to bring over all the plates with  free snacks that went along with our drinks:

Assortment of free finger foods in Verona

BTW, the glasses contain a typical Italian spritz cocktail: the red one is made with Campari, wine and sparkling water and the orange one with Aperol, wine, and sparkling water. The drinks were OK, but the plated assortment of snacks was memorable.

So, if you’re hungry, and in the mood for a classic Italian cocktail, that’s the place to go for a decent drink and a fun assortment of free finger foods.  Yes, all of those snacks are properly eaten with your fingers, as you might expect.

But one thing you might not expect is that mostly all the aperitivo-time snacks, even the ones that look like little mini pizzas with toppings in the photo above,  are served at room temperature. They aren’t necessarily cold, but they definitely are never hot.

Hmm. Could that by why french fries don’t qualify as finger foods in Italy? I mean, french fries are always eaten piping hot  …  and the typical finger foods in Italy never are. That’s just my hunch … or at least an hypothesis for today’s Food on Fridays.