Until fairly recently, Trieste and large parts of Friuli in the extreme north-eastern part of Italy belonged to Austria and the former Yugoslavia . The terrain varies dramatically from the ruggedness of the Dolomite mountains in the north to the lagoons and marshes of the coast. In between, where the hills slope down to the plains, the landscape is filled with maize fields (this is polenta country), meadows and vineyards.

The central part of the plain is called the Grave del Friuli - which simply means gravelly soil of Friuli - and produces large quantities of white wine, some good, some indifferent, plus a few reds. Even more prized, however, are the wines from the two zones in the eastern hills, Collio Goriziano and Colli Orientali del Friuli. Wedged into the high slopes of a range of hills that slant eastward to Slovenia, these vineyards produce some of the best white wines of Italy - pinot bianco, pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc and, above all, Friuli's universal drink, the beloved tocai.

 Friulians are so besotted with tocai they break all the customary wine rules with it, drinking it at any time with anything - fish, beef or chicken. It is a wine hard to describe and nothing like its linguistic namesake, tokay from Hungary . Yes, it's spicy but it has a pleasant dry and nutty tang. In fact, it needs to have that unmistakeable something considering what the locals pit against it in restaurants.

We were taken to the Castello dell'Aquila D'Oro (the Golden Eagle) for example, just outside Trieste for an autumn lunch that needed all the help it could get to be digested with ease. Our host described the menu as “hearty and strong-flavoured”. And how right it was.

 The restaurant's specialities were wild mushrooms and game, and the tocai never faded against the onslaught of either tagliatelle al funghi, or a gratin of potatoes and wild mushrooms in a bechamel sauce, or a wild mushroom soup. It even stood up to braised boar accompanied by a saute of several kinds of mushrooms and Friuli 's ubiquitous polenta. It was here we first tasted the region's signature dessert, La Gubana, a panettone-like cake that is served with a huge slosh of slivovitz, aka rocket fuel slyly promoted as plum brandy.

Back in Trieste , the city's chefs exploit every facet of Friuli 's produce treasure house: seafoods from the Adriatic - true scampi and succulent calamaretti; game and dozens of wild mushroom varieties from the mountains; and polenta and fresh cheeses. Italian, Austrian and Slavic influences merge in a cuisine that sounds as if it ought to be stodgy but instead turns out to be light and savoury. Most restaurants display an intense pride in local wines. After a week, names like Felluga, Humar, Jermann, Marin, Vescovo and Zamo become the labels to make a beeline for at the best local restaurants and, incidentally, also illustrate the region's ethnic diversity.

Many of Trieste 's restaurants wisely specialise. You go to the Ristorante Le Cave, for instance, for fresh fish and shellfish caught only a few kilometres away. And, as the name implies, Le Cave also prides itself on its white wines. The family that owns the restaurant makes their own tocai and sauvignon blanc, so you don't need to be a quiz show contestant to guess where the house wine hails from. Cleverly, the best fish dishes are very simply prepared to play up the just-caught taste to the max: grilled sole or scampi. But my advice is to plump for the zuppa di datteri. Datteri, which translate as sea dates, are a local, deeply flavoured variety of mussel with a uniquely briny taste. The chef at Le Cave just buys them as fresh as possible, steams them open and then dusts a little more salt over the top. Nothing more devious than that.

On the outskirts of Trieste is Antica Trattoria Suban, operated by the same family for 120 years. This is the best place to sample the prosciutto from nearby San Daniele, generally regarded as superior even to that of Parma , or try Speck, the air-cured bacon of Austria . My advice is to put yourself in the hands of the chef as far as your food choices are concerned. You won't regret it.

We were led through the spectrum of the restaurant's minestre: La Jota, the superb bean and sauerkraut soup that is a staple offering of Friulian mothers on dark winter nights; Crespelle alla Madriera, a delicate crepe filled with cheeses and basil and capped with cream; gnocchi with a sauce made of three cheeses; Canederli, a giant meat and bread dumpling bathed in a bolognese sauce; and a full-flavoured vegetable risotto. For our main course (you didn't think that was it, did you?), we downed large portions of Suban's special spiedini (skewered chunks of beef, veal and sausage) and of grilled funghi porcini, meaty forest mushrooms related to French cepes. The accompanying Friulian wines set us back only $15 a bottle. This is not an expensive corner of Europe .