What to eat in Italian Tyrol: speck, cheese and local dishes

Par Gabriel Goldberg 25 October 2026 11 min read

I love places where food immediately tells you something about the landscape. Looking at these counters, I see more than cured meat and cheese: I see a cuisine that makes sense of cold weather, time, herbs and sharing. Pieces of speck pile up, wheels of cheese fill the cabinet and the labels move between Italian and Alpine names. That abundance is what my photographs made me want to explore. The best-known foods of Italian Tyrol — South Tyrol / Alto Adige — include speck, canederli or Knödel, Schlutzkrapfen, crisp Schüttelbrot, Alpine cheeses and apple strudel. Their character comes from the meeting of Tyrolean and Italian traditions: smoking and maturation, pasta and butter, orchards and vineyards. In autumn, Törggelen brings this repertoire together around new wine and chestnuts. An Italian region with an Alpine memory Here, “Italian Tyrol” means South Tyrol , the autonomous province of Bolzano, known as Alto Adige in Italian and Südtirol in the Tyrolean tradition. It lies in Italy, south of the Brenner Pass. Bolzano / Bozen, Merano / Meran and Bressanone / Brixen are gateways to its valleys, orchards and mountains, including part of the Dolomites. Trentino, around Trento, is the neighbouring province to the south; Austrian Tyrol lies across the border. They share food traditions but are not interchangeable. South Tyrol belonged to the Habsburg Tyrolean territory before becoming part of Italy after the First World War. The history is legible at the table: spinach-filled…