No home-cooking on Bari beaches

Working families living in Bari (Apulia) complained that the increasing number of beach clubs are driving them from the sands.

The number of these clubs, which charge beachgoers for sun loungers and beach umbrellas while providing bar and restaurant service, has grown by 50 per cent over the last 10 years or so.

In theory, all of Italy’s beaches are state-owned public property but in practice the beach clubs are putting them beyond the reach of those of modest means.

Summer weekends and holidays from work were traditional times not only for picnics but full-scale meals cooked on the beach, a practice the beach clubs want to stamp out.

“It’s not nice to see these banquets on a private beach,” Erika Scarimbolo told the New York Times.  The 23-year-old bar waitress at the Adria 3.0 club on San Girolamo beach added that “a little decorum” was required.

The local media routinely carry reports of skirmishes at the entrance to the beach clubs while the national daily, Il Corriere della Sera, has described the confrontations as the “Beach-Picnic War.”

Arguments rage back and forth regarding the right to bring food to the beach, which has not prevented the owners of beach clubs from imposing their own unwritten rules.

“It’s illegal what they do, putting their hands into people’s bags,” Michele Scorca said to the New York Times after eating a beached-cooked meal of roast chicken and potatoes.

Paolo De Tullio, 67, maintained that the beach outings were all that many people had left: “Coming here is our right,” he insisted.

One of the owners of the Adria 3.0 beach club, Francesco Telegrafo, claimed to understand the time-honoured custom of cooking and eating on the beach and said he kept his prices as low as possible to cater for local families.

But local families, or those without a great deal of cash to splash were not convinced by his arguments.

On those stretches of the San Girolamo free of beach clubs, families still set up awnings, pergolas, picnic tables, chairs and portable stoves plus bulging bags of food and ingredients as they get ready for a day of serious eating.

Far from dying out, the custom is enjoying a revival in areas like Apulia, owing to the rise in the cost of living.

This was particularly noticeable in places like Bari, according to a survey by Coldiretti, Italy’s principal farmers’ association.

Findings made public in August revealed that many Apulians had returned to the ancestral custom of bringing their lunch to the beach and cooking it there, too.