In Europe’s most food-obsessed country, the season of excess has finished. Across Italy, families have finished the panettone, slurped down tortellini, and consumed platefuls of lentils—a tradition to augur good luck for the new year. But as the country winds down from its festive feasts, one small village in Abruzzo, a mountainous region in central-southern Italy, is preparing to eat like never before.
Every January 16, Villavallelonga, a village in the mountains of the Parco Nazionale d’Abruzzo (Lazio e Molise), Italy’s oldest national park, will hold its annual Panarda, a vast feast for the entire community. Around 80 families in the village of just 900 residents spend days preparing multicourse spreads of up to 50 dishes to share with friends and family, so that nobody in the village goes hungry.
