If you want a Lucchese first course, remember the name tordelli when you read the menu. It identifies a local tradition with room for different family and restaurant recipes, rather than a filling you assemble from a list of choices.
What are tordelli lucchesi?
- What it is
- Lucca-style crescent-shaped meat-filled pasta with meat ragù
- When to eat it
- Lunch or dinner, throughout the year; traditionally Sundays and feast days
- Reference house
- Buca di Sant’Antonio, Lucca
The name tordelli, with a ‘d’, is Lucca’s name for this kind of tortelli. The pasta is folded over its filling and sealed along a curved edge. This is the name to look for if you want the local dish rather than a generic plate of stuffed pasta. The exact mix inside varies by kitchen.
Carnival is another festive association, alongside the family celebrations that gave this dish its place at the table. For an everyday meal, look to a trattoria or osteria serving Lucchese cooking, though other local restaurants offer it too. You need not wait for a festival to try it. A serving lets you taste the way a kitchen puts its own stamp on a familiar dish, not whether it follows one definitive recipe.
What goes into the filling and ragù?
Inside the flour, egg and water pasta wrapper, the filling traditionally brings together beef and pork with stale bread softened in broth. The bread helps bind the seasoned meat into a filling that sits inside the folded pasta. Tordelli are not vegetarian even when the filling is hidden by the sauce: the pasta contains meat, and the customary ragù is made with minced beef and pork.
The mix is not identical in every kitchen. Cured pork such as mortadella may join the beef and pork, and some versions use veal, greens, grated cheese or egg. Nutmeg and other herbs or spices can change the flavour without changing the dish’s identity. Lucca’s municipal recipe attributed to Buca di Sant’Antonio includes local mortadella and chard, with pepolino, or wild thyme, among its seasonings. Those are particulars of one documented version, not ingredients you need to find in every plate.
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The usual finish is meat ragù, spooned over the cooked tordelli. Its thickness and quantity can vary from one kitchen to another. You are tasting two layers of meat cookery in the same first course, rather than plain pasta with a sauce added as an optional extra.
How to order tordelli in Lucca
Look for tordelli lucchesi al ragù on the menu, and tordelli alla lucchese or tordelli al ragù can also identify the dish. Ragù means meat sauce here. Order it as a primo, the first course, at lunch or dinner. You normally order the dish as listed, rather than choosing a filling or sauce separately.
Expect roughly €14–24 for a portion, with a simple trattoria generally at the lower end and a more formal restaurant towards the upper end. At a seated meal, allow roughly €2–4 per person for the coperto, the cover charge, in addition to food and drink. This is a charge for the table setting and service, not another plate of pasta.
If you want to carry on with local flavours after the pasta, Lucca wines and biadina covers a wine with dinner or a drink afterwards, while Buccellato di Lucca is a separate local sweet to consider after the savoury course.
How to recognise a Lucchese plate
Look for a folded half-moon with a scalloped sealed edge and meat ragù when you see a plate of Lucchese tordelli. The pieces need not all be the same size, nor does the sauce have to be equally thick or plentiful everywhere. Families and kitchens vary the meat, greens and seasoning in the filling, so appearance can guide you towards the dish without promising one exact recipe.
Handmade pasta is worth seeking when a menu advertises it: folding and sealing each piece is part of the craft behind that recognisable edge. Buca di Sant’Antonio, at number 3 on Via della Cervia in Lucca, is a municipal reference for handmade tordelli, rather than the only place to eat them. Its more formal, higher-priced setting may suit a longer meal, while a trattoria remains another way to try the dish.
- Name
- Buca di Sant’Antonio
- Location
- Via della Cervia, Lucca Maps
- Site
- bucadisantantonio.com
- Hours
- Mon Closed
- Tue–Sat 12:30–14:30, 19:30–22:00
- Sun Closed
- Typical visit
- 1 hour 30 minutes
- Essential fact
- Lucca’s municipality documents the restaurant’s handmade tordelli tradition.
- Signature dish
- Tordelli lucchesi
- Price range
- €€€
Sources & fact-checking
Checks against the sources below cover: key figures and opening hours.
