Sicilian Food Part One: Consistently delicious dining in a land of diversity, tradition and seasonal obsession

Italian food is regularly rated the world’s favourite national cuisine. Recent reports have revealed that there are more than 470,000 Italian restaurants around the world, more than any other nation’s culinary style. Globally, the Italian food industry is worth more than €228 billion. The irony, of course, is that if you really understand Italian food, you know there’s no such thing.

Italy as a modern country only dates back to 1861 and what we call “Italian” food is profoundly regional. Sure, everyone eats pasta … except the people who prefer risotto … but the shape of the pasta, whether it’s wet or dry, stuffed or sauced, with egg or without, varies widely. Before you even start down the path of what to put on it. There may be a pizzeria on every corner, but the thin, crispy pinsa you’ll get in the Dolomites and the thick, tomato-drenched sfincione of Sicily are completely different beasts from the Neapolitan classic. I remember celebrating a Ferrara family Easter at which a cousin excitedly shared that she was trying a “foreign” recipe. It was from Calabria.

Of all of the regional styles that conspire to make up Italian food as the world knows it today, Sicilian is my favourite. It’s no surprise that I default to cuisine of my childhood. (Although Sicilian-American food, as I explained in this article from my last trip to Sicily, is a different beast from what’s served on the beautiful island.) I’m not just voting for comfort and nostalgia. Sicilian is at the top of my list because it has a greater variety and is lighter than most other regions’ fare, and has by far the best deserts. Those superlatives are due to its tumultuous history and its extraordinary natural larder.

The Sicilians have been colonised by others for more than 4,000 years and all of those influences flow through their food. The Greeks, the Spanish, the French, the Arabs and more. Unusual spices, different ingredients, unique methods. The Arabs brought both sugar and pastry, laying the foundation for Sicily’s extraordinary pasticcerie today.

Fruit and vegetables benefit from almost consistent sun and, in much of the island, volcanic soil. Tomatoes, aubergines, figs, almonds, melons and more are all bursting with flavour. If you’re there in September, the first two will be on every menu in multiple incarnations.

Seafood is abundant and they eat many kinds in a variety of ways. But Sicilians know and respect what’s seasonal. Few restaurants would serve tuna in the autumn; everyone knows it’s a spring fish and any hitting a plate in September would have been frozen and flown in. There is meat, too. Beef, lamb and goat all inhabit the centre of the country. But even Sicily is regional and if you’re within 15 miles of the coast you’re not likely to find as much of it on your plate as things that swim.

Visitors imagine they’ll be constantly stuffed with carbohydrates but the reality isn’t so extreme. While a formal meal is four or five courses … antipasti, pasta, a main course, vegetables and salads, desserts … in reality Sicilians will graze across two or three courses and may split dishes with a companion. Serving sizes are appropriate, not excessive, and many pastas dishes feature as many vegetables as noodles. It’s rare to find a cream sauce, and cheese is used sparingly, almost as seasoning, rather than being at the centre of a dish. It is, in fact, probably one of the healthiest and most vegetarian-friendly places you can visit in Italy.

In Palermo, there were no set dining hours. Restaurants were lively and serving from noon until midnight. Out in the less-visited countryside things are more restricted, with lunch wrapping by 2:30 and dinner running from around 7:30 to 10:30. Other than Modica on a Saturday night, we didn’t go anywhere that followed Spain’s late hours. Many restaurants outside of Palermo were only open a few nights a week, and closed between lunch and dinner. While the food was universally delicious, limited hours and lots of empty tables suggest that the Sicilian restaurant scene is not as financially robust as owners would like it to be.

For more general observations on Sicilian food, see the article I wrote after my first visit. It all remains true except for my statement that cannoli at home were just as good as those in Sicily. I was in more touristy places that trip and had not discovered the fresh, sheep’s milk ricotta versions produced in the Val di Noto. They exist on another, higher culinary sphere.

I offer a roundup below of some of my favourite spots but, to be honest, I didn’t have a bad meal in two weeks. Even in Palermo, where we ate in obviously tourist-focused establishments where hawkers on the pavement pitched for our business. If anything, we turned that situation to our advantage, asking them what was fresh and best today. If they couldn’t give us details, and if there wasn’t a seasonal menu of the day to complement the printed menu, we steered clear. (We had several meals in the streets between our B&B and the opera house, a district heaving with restaurants. All good but interchangeable; none made the list below.)

AquaMadre at the Almar Giardino di Costanza, Mazaro del Vallo
The fine dining restaurant within our hotel for the first four nights was the only gig in town, unless you wanted to drive 20 minutes into Mazara, so we ate there twice. (We had heavy snacks in the bar and did a light picnic in the room on the other evenings.) I’m not sure I’d go out of my way to dine here … I suspect there were restaurants in town that were almost as good and a lot cheaper … but if you’re going to be “stuck” somewhere this was no sacrifice. Standout dishes included a a bundle of red prawn carpaccio stuffed with local goats’ cheese (cheese and raw fish shouldn’t work, but it was fabulous); a lightly seared tuna with a pistachio crust (this was before I got the local tuna lecture, probably flown in from Asia but still delicious); caserecce with milk sausage ragout and local artichokes; and amberjack with pesto Trapanese (crushed almonds, tomato and basil). This was my first introduction to the noble Tropea onion, so sweet it might be classified as a fruit. It appeared here as an amuse bouche: gently cooked leaves around a choux pastry morsel stuffed with sharp goats cheese and topped with a variety of seeds. There was also an eye-wateringly delicious dessert that had taken the flavour profile of crema di pistachio and turned it into a ball of delight.

A Cumacca, Caltagirone

With outdoor tables charmingly perched on the broad treads of one of this town’s many enormous staircases, A Cumacca benefited from exceptional views. Up and to the left one of the town’s main squares, down to the right the stairs falling away into a valley before the lower half of town reared up to fill the horizon on its other hill. It was a tiny place that hardly seemed to have more than a galley kitchen and appeared to be more of a bar than a restaurant, but appearances deceive. This was a delicious and substantial meal, so filling that desserts were impossible. Given that this was as far away from the coast as we got, it’s no surprise that we encountered more meat here. My husband started with beef carpaccio and moved on to pork tenderloin prepared with the season’s fresh nectarines. (Another habit the Sicilians picked up from the Arabs is mixing sweet and savoury.) I tried a black arancino made with cuttlefish ink (interesting, but it didn’t beat more traditional styles) and went on to some red snapper. Even here the coast is only 25 miles away, so the fish is fresh.

Cucina Sincera, Ragusa Ibla
In addition to being my favourite town in the Val di Noto, Ragusa Ibla delivered my best moderately-priced meal of the whole trip. The tiny restaurant sits in the shadow of the bombastic facade of the church of San Giuseppe, with more tables outside than in. The sinuous lines and bold statues of the church and the other magnificent architecture around you will give you plenty to look at while you eat. The restaurant drew me in with a bold chalkboard that said “We are against war and tourist menus” and they were as good as their word. Daily specials augmented the printed menu, something I always look for in any restaurant here. All of the dishes were simple and traditional, but cooked to perfection. You’ll get caponata in pretty much every restaurant on the island and everyone’s take will be slightly different. Here, the individual vegetables held their own shape and taste, the dominant notes were tomato and aubergine and the balance of sweet and sour was perfect. Comforting cavati (a small, shell-shaped pasta) Norma with aubergine, tomato and ricotta (what my mother used to call pink sauce) followed. An elegantly simple, obviously fresh cannolo crowned the meal. All consumed while sketching the church across the way, with a friendly waiter on hand when I needed him. Perfetto. 

Ristorane Baqqalà, Scicli

Another Val di Noto restaurant with a view, this fish-heavy spot has a triangular outdoor deck dining area looking over the outrageously over-the-top Palazzo Beneventano. You are literally just a stone’s throw from the town’s biggest public space, the Piazza Italia, but few tourists seem to wander here. It’s a blissfully quiet spot to explore traditional Sicilian food with some innovative twists while surrounded by the architecture that makes this area so famous. I didn’t bother with a starter but got served a basket of soft rolls fresh out of the oven with local olive oil. (Much of the bread in central Italy is made without salt, exceptionally plain and doesn’t have much taste on its own. That is not the case in Sicily.) The daily pasta special was freshly-caught amberjack quickly cooked with just-picked tomatoes and aubergines and a hint of spice. To follow, the only place in Sicily that dared to play with the sacred cannoli. Here, a cannolo verticale. Instead of the usual tube, they’d cooked the shell as round disks and layered it with the cannoli creme. Basically a Sicilian take on a mille feuille. It tastes pretty much the same as the standard cannolo but is a fun variation and, given how fiddly cannoli shells are to make, might be one to try at home. 

I Cucci, Palermo

Sicily is one of the few places I’ll break my tourist rule of never eating in a high-traffic area overlooking major tourist spots. In Paris, Venice or Barcelona you’re likely to get overpriced food that’s deeply average, since the owners don’t have to worry about repeat trade. Here, you get places like I Cucci, owned by two brothers who moved away to make their living as so many Sicilians do, then decided to move home and open this place. While Italian food is notoriously regional, it is possible to get great interpretations of one place’s dish somewhere else. Ten years before we had the best bistecca fiorentina of our lives just outside of Palermo, up in Monreale. It was on the menu here. Could we be lucky again? Yes. Once again, a better quality steak, better grilled, than I’ve had on many attempts in and around the dish’s home in Florence. That was preceded by some exceptionally cooked octopus for me … crispy and smoky on the outside, tender and full of flavour inside … on a bed of hummus with roasted tomatoes. Here’s that eastern Mediterranean influencer again. My husband started with inspiration from another direction; a roast beetroot and almond salad on a goat’s cheese cream that would have been at home in a French cafe. Dessert was another in a procession of fabulous cannoli. When you know you won’t get anything like it at home, it’s hard to order anything else. The restaurant is on the Palazzo Bologni, just off the Via Vittorio Emanuele about 100 metres up from the Quattro Canti.

Salina, Palermo
Head towards the opera house from the Quattro Canti, rather than towards I Cucci and the cathedral, and you’ll come to an upscale fish restaurant on the corner of Via Maqueda and Via Bari called Salina. It’s one of the few restaurants we ate in that had a generous dining space inside as well as out, suggesting a year-round crowd. It was also unusually high-end on the decor, with elegant black and silver interiors and modern murals. Prices and dishes were a little closer to fine dining than some of the other spots on this list, but it still had a casual atmosphere and a variety of price points. We, unsurprisingly, drifted upwards on that scale, especially when presented with an interesting wine list with lots of local options and helpful descriptions. More variations on the same seasonal themes here: tartare of the island’s famous red shrimp, sesame-seed crusted amberjack on a bed of aubergine with a topping of sweet Tropea onion, both from the specials board. We seriously considered going back another night, but Palermo is so swollen with tempting restaurants it seemed wrong to eat at the same place twice.

Next time, I move on to our Michelin-starred experience in Modica, one so extraordinary it demands its own article.

Extreme Sicily can challenge and delight: here’s an itinerary to balance the wonder with R&R

Someone once explained to me that Italy gets more extreme the further south you go. If, by Rome, your nerves are a bit on edge from the noise, the traffic and the queue cutting, if the contrast between opulence and grime is grating, if you’re feeling over-stuffed by food and wine … it might be time to stop. If, however, life is just seeming brighter, the sights more magnificent and the dinners ever better, press on. On until, as far south as you can go before you hit Africa, you reach Sicily.

Sicily feels like everything Italian … the good and the bad … distilled to its most powerful essence.

It is incredibly ancient compared to the rest of Italy: the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks all lived here. Want to see some of the best Greek ruins in the world? Forget the Acropolis, come here. Every building in Sicily is built on the bones of past ages, and most of them seem to be crumbling. Even the new ones.

Other than for a few hundred years of glory in the early Middle Ages, the island has been a colony rather than its own boss. The nationalities of the absentee landlords might have changed, but in turns they abused, ignored and siphoned off resources. (Very occasionally, as with whoever built the Villa Romana del Casale, they fell in love with the place and ploughed their own resources into improving it. But this was the exception.) Many Sicilians, including my ancestors, argued that Italian unification was simply another foreign invasion; now the abuse came from Savoy, then Rome, rather than Madrid. Colonial overlords … and the mafia brutes that took advantage of their distance … drove Sicily to such a state that when emigration became a viable possibility for the average person, vast numbers of its people went elsewhere. An empty countryside scattered with abandoned houses is a vision of modern Sicily.

Extremes, age and colonial exploitation have created a place that’s both Italian and distinctly alien. Many places in Sicily remind me more of Tunisia or South Africa than Tuscany or the Veneto. Tourism in Sicily can be challenging. While gleaming new motorways are a testimony to EU improvement projects, local roads can be an adventure. Visual clues that usually tell you “turn around, you’re in a dangerous neighbourhood” don’t work the same way here; a dark alley full of graffiti and rubbish can host upscale jewellery shops or magnificent Baroque oratories. UNESCO heritage town centres are surrounded by hideous, often collapsing post-war housing. Cultural attractions can be light on English explanations; my basic Italian gets used here far more than in the north. And yet, if you love culture, history and food … the foundations of this blog … Sicily delivers rewards out of all proportion to the effort you put in. There is no place else in Europe quite like it.

I decided on two weeks here to celebrate my 60th birthday and our 13th wedding anniversary. (Marrying on your birthday is an excellent way to ensure neither of you ever forget your anniversary.) I wanted something indulgent and celebratory. Something that offered loads of top quality sightseeing with proper R&R and tremendous food. Opera at Palermo’s Teatro Massimo and cooking class with a Duchess in her palazzo was the icing on the cake.

Our itinerary went like this:

Days 1 - 5: Almar Giardino di Costanza, near Mazara del Vallo
The idea was to start the holiday with some restorative pamper time. We flew into Palermo and picked up a car at the airport. Unfortunately, our 90-minute queue at Avis/Budget/Maggiore took only a little less time than our whole drive south. The delay was so extreme we had to modify our plans to visit the Greek ruins at Segesta and content ourselves with a drive by. Which, to be honest, is still quite impressive and offers great photo opportunities without paying for admission.

The hotel is one of those Sicilian contrasts: a lush and luxurious walled complex surrounded by the dry, dusty, ruin- and rubbish-filled agricultural outskirts of Mazara. The few miles between motorway and hotel will make you wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into; once you’re through the gates you’re in another world. An old agricultural estate has been repurposed as luxury hotel and spa. The building is a big white and yellow “U” surrounding gardens, pools and fountains. We upgraded to a pool/garden view, which gave us an enormous balcony with table, chairs and sun loungers. 

The bedroom featured towering ceilings, an enormous television, arm chairs for watching, and a cheerful bouquet springing from a traditional Sicilian head vase to wish me happy birthday and anniversary. (A cake with burning candle also showed up on the actual day.) The basement … part of it opening onto the lowest level of the garden … features an upscale restaurant and a high-end spa. There’s an indoor swimming pool, hot and cold bathing tubs, saunas, steam rooms, and relaxation rooms all designed in a modern take on Arab-Norman architecture.

In short, it’s the kind of place you don’t really have any need or desire to leave. Even the private beach, accessible by hotel shuttle for morning or afternoon stints, didn’t seem worth the effort. Lots of things on my local possibilities list fell to the competition of napping to spa music and lounging in hot water, namely Trapani and Erice. But a few sightseeing excursions did demand the effort: the Greek ruins at Selinunte, the Greek statue of “the dancing Satyr” in Mazara del Vallo, a look at the salt flats above Marsala and a tasting of that town’s eponymous wine at Florio.

Days 5 - 6: Villa Trigona, Piazza Armerina
The next major stop in the itinerary was the Val di Noto, which would have been a straight 4-hour drive along the southwest coast of Sicily had we gone direct. But a date with a bucket list item demanded a detour. About 40 years ago Professor Jim Packer beguiled me with his Art and Architecture of Ancient Rome class at Northwestern, and his descriptions of the Villa Romana del Casale in the Sicilian Countryside have haunted me ever since. It was worth the detour. (More to come on that in a future article.)

We spent the night at another old agricultural estate turned to tourism. The Villa Trigona isn’t as big or as high-end as the Almar, but it was correspondingly less expensive. The family still owns and runs the place and has done a major renovation in the past few years, so venerable architectural details sit comfortably with fresh plaster and sheet glass walls of modern extensions. Our room, however, was 19th century in all but its electrification: old school wooden furniture, beautiful bed linens, decorative floor tiles, whispy curtains screening french doors to Juliet balconies that looked out over the surrounding woodlands and mountains and down into the front courtyard of the estate house. Another set of French doors led out to our own roof terrace. It was almost a shame to only be here just one night. 

The family offers dinner in that modern extension. It was hearty and delicious if not memorable, but we were grateful to be able to eat in. Villa Trigona is off winding, mountainous roads 10 minutes from Piazza Armerina and I wouldn’t have enjoyed navigating after dark. There’s nothing in walking distance. 

Days 6 - 11: Melifra, Ispica
Next came five full days enjoying the Val di Noto, proclaimed a UNESCO world heritage site because of its baroque architecture. All the guidebooks will tell you about the 1693 earthquake that flattened southeastern Sicily, and how the towns in the area rebuilt in a florid Baroque style that makes them gems of the architectural world. What they probably won’t mention is that these exquisite town centres are ringed by large and unattractive sprawls of modern development, that the Val is thick with modern industry and commercial agriculture, and that it’s a harsh landscape of pockmarked limestone peaks and scrubby brush with lots of winding roads between points A and B. This is not the charming hill towns of Tuscany.

The towns, however, are worth the effort. Noto is the most famous and therefore the most crowded; I enjoyed Scicli and Ragusa Ibla (top photo) much more. The Baroque heart of Modica was much bigger than anticipated, and the large crowds socialising on the streets at 11 pm on a Saturday testified to the fact this is a modern, living town, not just a tourist destination. We were there not for the late-night passeggiata but for dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant, Accursio, that was one of the highlights of the trip. If you get sick of Baroque towns, there are beaches and a nature reserve where migrating birds … notably flamingoes … pause during their spring and autumn migrations. There will be more all of that in articles to come. 

We stayed in an AirB&B rental called Melifra that was absolutely ideal. It’s on the edge of a modern development on the outskirts of Ispica (this one, unusually, rather attractive … though still cursed with the Sicilian plague of unfinished or unkempt properties, like rotting teeth in the middle of an otherwise gleaming smile). While not usually listed amongst the highlights of the Val di Noto, Ispica has the same baroque heart as its neighbours with a handful of standout buildings. For us, however, its greatest advantages were that it sat in the middle of everything we wanted to see, and the views to the sea are quite spectacular. Even more so when you’re sitting in the hot tub in the roof garden at Melifra, glass of cold local wine in your hand while watching the sunset.

Melifra occupies the top floor of a three-story townhouse at the end of a block; access is up a dramatic winding staircase with a glass roof above. There are two bedrooms, each en suite, and a combined sitting room/kitchen dining area, but the crown jewel is undoubtably that roof garden. In addition to the hot tub there’s a shower, two loungers, a sofa, coffee table and chairs, and a large TV pre-programmed with all the streaming services (you will need your own password to sign in). Someone with highly-attuned interior design sensibilities has been at work here; colour schemes, decorative items, rugs and art have all been selected to complement a single colour scheme.

It was as tasteful as a luxury hotel, but all ours. Hosts Gianfranco and Barbara were fantastic, establishing a WhatsApp group for us for the duration of our stay, flooding us with useful information and responding quickly when we needed more.

I soon got into the habit of sightseeing during the day, nice lunch out, then back to Melifra for a soak in the hot tub. We’d spend the evenings in the outdoor seating area, nibbling a light dinner, drinking local wine and working our way through “The Rings of Power”. The dramatic landscape here seemed to fit a foray into Middle Earth.

There were only two flies in the Melifra ointment. If you are very tall, this apartment built under the eves may present a hazard. It’s beautifully designed, with skylights with automatic blinds in the roof that can flood the space with sunlight, but my husband whacked his head multiple times before he got used to stooping at the sides of rooms. You’re also about 3/4 of a mile from the town centre so it’s not really easy walking distance for going out. We only went out for dinner once and we preferred the extreme quiet, but this might be an issue for others.

Days 11-15: L’Olivella B&B, Palermo
Palermo can be hard work: it’s magnificent and exciting, but also noisy and dirty. If Sicily is like the concentrated essence of Italy, Palermo is the further distillation of Sicily. I thought I’d put it at the end of our agenda for when we were well-rested and had grown accustomed to the pace of the island. I also opted for the humblest of our accommodations here, figuring we’d had our luxury and would spend less time “at home” in the city.

L’Olivella is closer to what used to be called a “pensione”: you take one of a suite of rooms let out in your landlady’s house, there’s a modest sitting room, all the guests sharing a table at breakfast and then you’re unlikely to get a glimpse of your host or the other guests until the next morning. The whole place has towering ceilings with a few retaining some lovely frescoes that look to be from the 1930s. The floors are tiled with a beautiful array of Liberty Style (the Italian take on Art Nouveau) patterns. Our bedroom, Lingotto, was generously sized with French doors letting in light from two sides of the building: one side with a tiny balcony just big enough for two chairs and a narrow table. The location is superb. From our balcony we looked into the windows of the archaeological museum. The opera house loomed above the end of the street, between us and its front door were 200 metres of restaurants and artisan shops. A 10 minute stroll took us to Quattro Canti, the sightseeing heart of town.

We had two prime objectives in Palermo: Turandot at the opera and a very special cooking class in a palace in the Kalsa district. We’d already seen the Palatine Chapel and the cathedral at Monreale on a previous trip, so we were free with the rest of our time to explore some of the “Tier Two” sites. I spent a lot of time drinking in outrageous Baroque religious interiors, notably the oratories of Serpotta and the Jesuit church known as the Casa Professoressa. Honouring that rare and wonderful period in Sicilian history when it was the intellectual and artistic heart of Europe, I revelled in the mosaics in La Martorana and the Arab-Norman lines of San Cataldo. Yes, it was very church heavy!

We also spent a very happy morning poking around the Archaeological Museum, which is mostly distinguished by having the best bits of Selinunte under cover. In many ways it’s a shame that this stuff isn’t on site there, as the displays here explain the ruins far better than anything in Selinunte, and the treasures they’ve preserved really bring the place to life. This museum experience towards the end of our trip made our explorations at the beginning even more meaningful.

I could have done so much more. There was a museum of Sicilian tiles on my list, and a day trip to Cefalù. I was disappointed to discover that the traditional puppet shows only happen on weekends, and we were only in town for weekdays. The weather was exquisite and we could have headed to Mondello beach. But it was the end of the trip and we were mindful that we wanted to head home relaxed and refreshed. So multiple-hour, multiple-course lunches with multiple bottles of wine featured more prominently than high-impact sightseeing. About all that food, of course, there are articles ahead.

In coming weeks I’ll cover key sites, food and experiences. This gives you context and big picture for a two-week Italian itinerary I’d happily recommend, and do again.