THE fragmentation that has characterized Italys politics since its late-19th-century unification has characterized its cuisine for much longer. Travel around the country and its hard not to be floored by the incredible differences in food from one area  sometimes one town  to another. This is especially true in regions as diverse as Emilia-Romagna  home of parmigiano, prosciutto and aceto balsamico, and blessed with good soil, a favorable climate and flat topography  or Sicily, starkly Mediterranean but a place where the strong influences of North Africa and the Middle East created a cuisine that isnt seen anywhere else in the world.  Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times  Trattoria Gigi is nestled on the Piazza Carmine.  Talk of subtle gradations in Italian food is even something of a sport among obsessive-compulsive travelers, who might spend hours engaged in friendly one-upmanship over exactly where to find exactly which near-perfect dish. They might have stumbled on the quintessential Neapolitan pizza, or an extraordinary linguine with clams at a hole in the wall in Rome, or the best farinata in Genoa.  Curiously, its the countrys most popular tourist region  Tuscany  where the food can be least interesting. Most of the region is landlocked, more extreme in its climate than much of the country, suitable for growing grapes and certainly olives, but not great for extensive agriculture. Historically, the mountainous terrain made trade and communication between villages difficult, limiting the spread of ingredients and of ideas about cooking. So visitors to glorious Firenze eat steak and wonder whats next.  Whats next is Lucca. Its food is among Italys most compelling  almost certainly the best in Tuscany  and the town is a draw in its own right. Enclosed by walls whose broad tops look out over the towns lovely towers and broad, calm piazzas on one side and park grounds on the other, Lucca may not have the perfectly medieval feeling of Siena, but neither does it have the crowds. Although it gets its share of tourists, it almost never feels overrun.  The difference between food in Lucca and the rest of the region is perhaps best epitomized by one of the towns most representative dishes, tortelli lucchese. In Italy, you can determine a regions historical affluence by the dominant type of pasta. Flour and water, perhaps with some oil, produced a bleak-colored pasta made by poor people. Flour with a few eggs, yielding a pale yellow pasta, was the pasta of the not-so-poor. Flour with a lot of eggs  creating a brilliant yellow  was for the wealthy.  Tuscan pasta was almost never made with eggs, which made it closer in spirit to Italys south than its north. But Lucca, with banking and a robust silk trade, had money, which explains why its food is better than that in the rest of Tuscany. Not surprisingly, tortelli lucchese is bright yellow pasta, stuffed with seasoned meat and topped with a heavily meat-laden ragù. Talk about rich!  Most restaurants in Lucca offer not only tortelli lucchese but also the other local specialties: a soup of farro (a barleylike grain) with beans; fried everything; rabbit in many forms; and baccalà (salt cod). Things have not changed much; the Lucchese remain set in their ways. For the most part, the bread is still unsalted. (If you have never eaten unsalted bread, consider yourself blessed; its dull and flat-tasting. Fortunately, many places serve salted focaccia along with it.) And some foods are eaten only one way: My friend Ed Schneider, dining at Ristorante Giglio, started to put lemon on a piece of grilled baccalà, and a waiter swooped down on him, grabbed the lemon, and explained that it was there only for idiots. Mr. Schneider was instructed to eat his salt cod with lots of oil and lots of black pepper, as the locals do.  In an attempt to give an overview of Luccan fare, Ive chosen restaurants that I believe execute local specialties best, but theyre not the only options. Buralli and Buca di SantAntonio, both in the center of town, are established favorites of other visitors, and may well be worth adding to your list. And if you want to venture a little farther afield, both Romano and Lorenzo, in the port of Viareggio, are excellent seafood restaurants.  Nor are restaurants the only places to eat: Santini, in the Piazza Citadella, is a world-class gelateria (and a better bet than the dessert offerings in most restaurants). You can buy torta con becchi (birds beaks, because of the peaked shape of the crusts), in many bakeries; these can be made with almost anything, though theyre usually seen with either chard or chocolate (sometimes both). Buccellato, the raisiny, eggy sweet bread, is also good for a snack.  But though tradition is important here, it isnt everything, as La Mora demonstrates nicely. This is clearly a Luccan restaurant, but the chef  who worked in New York at Osteria del Circo and Le Cirque in 1999 and 2000  carefully takes a few liberties, and they work. In a city where every restaurant offers essentially the same dishes, I found it delightful that one played around a bit.  MARK BITTMAN, who contributes to the Dining and Travel sections, will be host of The New York Timess PBS series Best Recipes in the World With Mark Bittman.
Where can you find the best food in Tuscany? This walled city, once a thriving banking and silk center, might be the place.