Sicilian Food Part Two: Accursio elevates traditional cuisine to an innovative and delicious place

I curate my social media so rigorously that it’s easy to forget how toxic an environment an online community can be. Thus I was taken by surprise when, while asking about Michelin-starred dining experiences within a usually-constructive Italian travel forum, several respondents energetically insulted me for the stupidity of wasting money on fine dining. I like to think the aggressors weren’t aware of just how nasty they came across. But they did raise a fair point. When Sicilian food is so consistently excellent, and often inexpensive, why would you spend all that money on a fancy restaurant?

In three words: elevation, innovation, and education. 

Sicily’s magnificent local produce, the cultural melange of its history and its natives’ obsession with food create one of the best culinary cultures in the world. It is, however, fundamentally a cuisine known for its simplicity and heartiness. There are culinary traditionalists, raised in the sacred foundations of the Cordon Bleu, who acknowledge Italian as perfectly pleasant for a hearty, casual meal but instinctively believe it can’t compete with francophone dishes of high complexity, smooth sauces, and elegant presentation. Even MasterChef UK, a franchise that’s mostly abandoned classical French food in favour of more exotic cuisines, will always question whether pasta dishes are “good enough” and can be presented nicely enough, to win. (Happily, Campania-born Vito Coppola won Celebrity Masterchef this year with a style uncompromisingly drawn from Southern Italy, so there is hope.) Quite simply, in a world where the French classics still set the standard, I wanted to see how a Sicilian chef could elevate his game to compete.

Second, while everyone buys in to the idea of the cucina povera … the wholesome, poor but loving kitchen of the Italian grandmother that’s existed for time immemorial …. it’s largely a myth created by food marketing companies in the late 20th century. As John Dickie explains in his excellent book Delizia: The Epic History of Italians and their Food, Italian cuisine is heavily based on the urban traditions of aristocrats and rich merchants who were always looking for something new. (Most peasants across Italy were so poor until the 20th century that they existed on monotonous subsistence diets with little scope for culinary traditions.) The Italians have also been fantastic at taking advantage of new ingredients and processes, whether that’s spices coming in from the Far East, tomatoes and peppers being introduced from the New World or machines making pasta. I wanted to see how this long tradition of innovation came to life in modern Sicily.

Finally, I wanted to learn. One of the joys of the kinds of restaurants that get Michelin stars is that they’re obsessed about their supply chain, their processes and their wines, and they’re very happy to tell you about it. Each dish usually comes with a narrative, and these sorts of places hire staff who are delighted to engage in conversation about the nuances of what’s on the plate. If you go for a wine pairing, you’ll inevitably be introduced to new grape varieties and producers. Every meal is an education. Sure, I knew more than the average paesana about Sicilian food, but I wanted to learn more.

Enter Accursio Craparo, known as the Chef of the two Sicilies for his passion to bring the traditions of the east and the west of the island together. Accursio is not just a chef but a storyteller, something obvious from the moment you ring the bell to be allowed into this quiet, peaceful restaurant space in the vaulted basement of an old palace. As he explains on his website: “Everything here resembles myself, in the warmth of a house that I feel is mine and where I am happy to welcome my guests. The floor presents itself as a field of flowers, the walnut chairs and tables recall the generous trees, the colours are those of the countryside, the lanterns those of the small boats that used to hang from the trees on summer evenings.”

The narrative continues on the plate. The first dish, called “welcome to Sicily”, is a wooden bowl of wild herbs cradling a sphere of liquid that’s somewhere between a consommé and a herbal tea. Close your eyes, inhale, and you could be walking through a fragrant meadow. Next comes “the rite of origins”, a simple presentation of bread, salt and local olive oil. This is the third fine dining restaurant of the year in which we’ve seen bread spotlighted as its own course rather than consigned to the basket for pre-meal snacking. Given bread’s sacral role in human life, and Sicily’s profound Catholicism, it’s particularly logical here.

Preliminaries over, it’s time to swim in abundant seafood. “The arrival of the breeze” presents fried mullet, apricot and yogurt, so exquisitely shaped it looks more like a piece of cake than a savoury. “Painted blue” vied for our favourite dish of the night: two small, perfectly-grilled squid with goat's ricotta, seaweed and saffron. The mix of green, yellow and white sauces on the plate reminded me of the bright tilework that clothes the island. “The juice of Sicily” was not lemon but a sauce for linguini with anchovy, tuna bottarga and fennel. Anyone who thinks pasta can’t be elevated to fine dining needs to take a look at this dish.

We moved inland with another pasta dish called “scorched lands” celebrating the distinctive formaggio ragusano cheese that somehow comes from the cows here despite the fact the land is more often brown than green. It came on a handmade pasta shape I’d never seen before, sort of a large spiral, thick and chewy, sauce made more exotic with spices and capers. Next came “the metamorphosis of the landscape”. We were so delighted with everything and were chatting about so many things with the staff that I forgot to ask what that name had to do with roast fish that had been poached in “acqua pazza di mandorle”, a traditional broth and wine-based liquid here spiked with almonds.

Our transition from savoury to sweet came with the kind of illusion often deployed to add a bit of fun to the high art of fine dining. The local potters had been put to work not on traditional forms but on egg cartons and spheres that looked like they’d come out of a chicken that morning. Your “egg” opens to reveal egg white and yolk, but dip your spoon and you’ll find something close to a panna cotta with a centre of sharp passion fruit puree. And finally we’d arrived at the climax, essentially a chocolate mille-feuille accompanied by sheep’s ricotta ice cream. The crunch of the layers came not from your traditional pastry but from aubergine, somehow magicked from vegetable to sweet treat. Given how much aubergine this island seems to produce at this time of year, finding new uses for it makes perfect sense. I’d completely lost track of the names of the dishes by this point so forgot to ask what story “a bite of culture” told. Other than … if this is culture, I’ll take another bite for myself.

I was the designated driver for the night, so my husband did the six-glass wine pairing and I took sips. As you might imagine from the menu, the wines were mostly whites though varied widely depending on the flavour profile of the sauces. There was a light red to go with the earthy pasta and one of the fish, continuing the mission of many sommeliers to prove you can drink a lot more with seafood than white wine. The wines were mostly Sicilian and all unknown to us, so certainly delivered on the education front.

That menu at Accursio will set you back €135, with an additional €85 for a six-glass wine pairing. I’m never going to claim that’s cheap, but even with the terrible exchange rate at the moment for British Sterling, it was still at least 15% less than you would pay for an equivalent experience in London. And, if I’m being brutally honest, wasn’t that much more expensive than some of our meals at nicer “every day” restaurants in Sicily when we had three courses, an aperitif and a bottle of good wine. So while it should certainly be saved for a special treat, Accursio made that splurge worth while with all the elevation, innovation and education I was looking for. In addition to nine plates of extraordinary food.