The History of the Giant Spiedo of Pieve di Soligo, a tradition since 1956

“The history of the Giant Spiedo begins way back in 1956, but despite the years that have passed, the Spiedo set up in October, in the square in Pieve di Soligo, never feels like a déjà vu.
In fact, there are many new features added over the years, changes that have occurred and even customs that have disappeared since Ettore Baratto and Domenico “Memi” Zorzi, respectively president and secretary of the Pro Loco of Pieve di Soligo, created what would become the highlight of the Quartier del Piave.
The fame of the event also crossed national borders, sometimes with polemical tones, as stated for example on the back of an old French postcard:

“Extermination des oiseaux 3000 oiseaux “grillent” sur la place du Marché de Pieve di Soligo”
“3000 birds, called gentle-beaked, that several women in the village committed to plucking for a week at the Locanda La Posta”

Now, more correctly, the ones that end up on the spiedo are no longer lugarin, morete, panigase and thordine, but quails raised on local farms in the Veneto.

The giant frying pan

The “giant frying pan” in which the employee Elsa Baratto and other women fried the fritters has also disappeared.
It was a large frying pan about four meters in diameter, placed at a height of two meters and composed inside of many small frying pans containing oil, each of which equipped with independent gas cylinders covered by a large curtain. Many still remember the scent that spread all around.

Spiedo-roasting characters

Those were the years in which the President of the Italian Republic Giovanni Gronchi, stopping to chat amiably with the Honorable Francesco Fabbri and asking him what town he came from, having received the answer Pieve di Soligo, recalled how passing through on a return trip from Vittorio Veneto he had been struck by the beauty of the colonnade of the Alla Loggia tavern.
The same years in which Fellini or Moravia would stop by to greet the Pieve poet Andrea Zanzotto.
And then you could also meet the soprano Toti Dal Monte or Giovanni Comisso intent on watching the “masters of the spiedo” Poldo, born Leopoldo Nardi, and Ezio Antoniazzi directing the work around the giant spiedo, the gigantic rotisserie, or eating the spiedo.

In 2017, Spiedo Gigante entered the Guinness Book of Records for the largest quail roast in the world.”