Summer has us feeling very grateful for the outpouring of wonderful flavors that come with a ripe harvest. Everything seems to taste better, and it should be a cause for celebration. In Italy, recognizing the foods and traditions surrounding them is cause for a party, a fest, a sagra. We can certainly get behind that idea.

“A sagra (the word is related to ”sacro,” which means sacred) traditionally celebrated a town’s patron saint, but in the last few decades, this type of festival has changed into a food-centric free-for-all. On deeper levels, of course, a sagra is about community, too.” (Source: When It’s Sagra Time, Everybody is Italian, The New York Times).

The power of food to bring together a community is a concept we deeply believe in at Via Umbria, which is why we are hosting our on Sagra di Porchetta this Thursday. Right in Dupont Circle, we will be celebrating outdoors the delight we experience feasting in the summer. We want to take the joy we have experienced in Italy, the joy of sharing the best food communally, and bring it to Washington, DC.

“All across Italy, sagras — celebrations hinging on harvests or regional foods — are a way of life. They may be as modest as a single tent in a piazza where farmers grill local radicchio (in Treviso), or as expansive as a town full of wide-open front doors, where families hand out samples of their olive oil (in Spello). They are the effusive Italian equivalents of small-town American food festivals, and they are a whole lot of fun.” (From, When It’s Sagra Time, Everybody is Italian)

Established food culture runs deep in Italy, but is relatively new to the United States (after all, we are a fairly young country). We hope to give you a taste of the food party that is a sagra this Thursday at i Ricchi. So sip some tasty some beer, eat some pig, nibble some Ligurian products from the olive harvest, and toast to a celebration of summer, flavor, and place.

Ci Vediamo!

— Via Umbria