Antica Norcineria Fratelli Ansuini
Norcia gave the world the word 'norcino' — a master pork butcher — and the Ansuini family has been practising that art on Via Anicia since 1958. Step inside and you are hit by the dense, spiced perfume of hanging salami, wild-boar sausages and the prized mazzafegato, a sweet-spiced liver sausage that exists almost nowhere else.
What to buy and taste
The signature product is the Norcia IGP black truffle salami — pork seasoned with shavings of Tuber melanosporum from the surrounding Sibillini hills. Ask for a sliced tasting and pair it with the shop's own schiacciata flatbread, which they keep behind the counter.
Do not leave without a vacuum-packed lonza (cured pork loin) or a small jar of truffle paste. Both travel well and taste like the landscape they came from.
A lesson in Umbrian charcuterie
The staff speak enough English to walk you through the difference between a mazzafegato dolce (sweetened with pine nuts and raisins) and the more rustic salato version. It is a five-minute conversation that changes how you think about charcuterie forever.
Norcia's cold mountain air and the specific microclimate of the Valnerina are credited with making curing conditions here uniquely favourable — a fact the Ansuini brothers will tell you with quiet pride.
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