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.

Two decades on, Locanda Locatelli's star still shines for elegant simplicity, regional cuisine

There are just three Italian restaurants in London blessed with Michelin stars. Though each is distinctive from the other, all three present a view of the world's most popular cuisine that's far removed from the pizza and pasta joints most people associate with the word Italian. Closest to my heart has always been Locanda Locatelli, which celebrates its 20th year with a star in 2023.

It was the first place I'd ever been that elevated Italian food to fine dining. Many of the dishes were
familiar ... the major cultural influence of my childhood was Italian-American ... and I cooked some of them regularly, but chef Giorgio Locatelli worked a magic that took flavours to a different level. Yet he did it while retaining the simplicity, and the celebration of key ingredients, that's so essential to Italian food. He also maintained a rare authenticity to regional recipes. Downmarket Italian Anglicises everything, upmarket tends to bring in a lot of French influence, or goes off piste with crazy experimentation. Giorgio's kitchen serves up dishes that might come straight from a nonna in Palermo or Piedmont, just refined to their finest essence.

It's been 11 years since my last visit, and I'm delighted to say that absolutely nothing has changed. So you could just read my last review. But to give two decades of quality its due, I'll write on.

It was a special occasion, as any visit to the Michelin stratosphere and its related prices should be. An adopted nephew provided the excuse: a young foodie whose tastes in both food and wine are already quite sophisticated, we'd offered a Michelin-starred meal if he made his expected A-level grades. His success meant we got to accompany him on a culinary journey while his parents get to fund King‘s College London. A clear win for team Bencard.

We decided to go for the full four-course Italian extravaganza: antipasto, pasta, main and pudding. Clearly, I didn't read my own review before we sat down or I would have remembered "you could do the traditional four ... but the portions here are large enough to make that rather excessive." Hey ho. We were in excess territory. The menu was so tempting it would have been hard to decide what to forgo, with the antipaste looking particularly tempting. I actually thought of having two or three of those instead of the traditional courses.

Our young scholar started with scallops, the husband opted for pigeon legs accompanied by pigeon-liver pate on crostini and I went for burrata with grilled fennel and grapefruit. The last was a riposte to all of the times I've been positive I don't like grapefruit in savoury salads. It's clearly all about the balance, which Locatelli's somehow manages to get right. The scallops were a revelation for our lad, who'd never had them cooked with their corals still attached and was pleasantly surprised. My husband's delighte with the pigeon was sharpened by an exquisite bottle of schioppettino that he proclaimed a perfect match. (This little known variety from Friuli is one of my favourites and something I'll order whenever I see it on a menu. The sommelier's unfeigned joy when I chose it was one of the best parts of the meal.) Meanwhile, the lad and I had tucked into a carricante (white) from the slopes of Mt. Etna.

Thankfully, Mr. B had moved to pumpkin tortellini for the next course so switched wine colours, or we would have needed another bottle of the red. Our scholar and I both opted for the lobster with spaghetti, which was good but lacked the sweet acidity this dish has at its best, with ripe, fresh summer tomatoes. I should have gone with my other choice, gnocchi with a wild venison ragu. Not only would it have been more seasonal, but I've never really managed to make good gnocchi at home, so it's always informative to sample a professional offering.

Our guest clearly won the contest of the main courses with slices of char-grilled ribeye on cavolo nero, its simple perfection a textbook definition of great Italian food. I chose roast rabbit leg wrapped in parma ham, again defaulting to something I love but always have trouble cooking. (The difference between raw and overcooked rabbit is minuscule.) Mr. B left the rest of the schioppettino to us, moving on to a truffle-crusted fillet of brill and the rest of the bottle of carricante. Even though I loved my dish, I was looking with envy at the others. Everything managed the trick of being delicious comfort food while at the same time elegant and sophisticated.

Only a broken oven saved me from the sad inevitability of powering through a dessert when I was already stuffed. But I would have happily continued on through a pistachio shuffle and chocolate chip ice cream,  combining some of my favourite flavours in the world. Fortunately they did have some pistachio ice cream, so we could end with a bit of sweetness without approaching a Mr. Creosote moment. Locatelli's only uses the pistachios from the Sicilian village of Bronte, famed as the most flavourful in the world. One small quenelle of the ice cream here has more flavour than a gallon of the green stuff in your typical gelateria. With flavours this intense, less really is more. 

I have been to many Michelin-starred establishments since my first visit to the then newly-celebrated Locanda Locatelli. In many ways, this place is an aberration. While the food is beautifully plated, it's closer to what you could attempt at home than the gels, towers, cubes and swooshes that so often turn a dinner plate into modern art. There's no tasting menu. Nothing is re-invented or de-constructed. The front of house staff is resolutely Italian, in a city where almost every top restaurant features a United Nations of talented youth ambitious to get ahead in this high-end industry. It feels like a warm, welcoming family restaurant, not a palace of cutting edge gastronomy. Forget all the extra pomp and circumstance, Locanda Locatelli's star is for what's going on in your mouth. After 20 years, I'm happy to say they still deserve it.

Angela Hartnett's Murano and the legendary River Cafe hold London's other two Italian stars. I adore Murano and it was the other option for this lunch the moment our scholar chose Italian. Giorgio got my vote simply because we hadn't been there in so long. Angela's is more formal, more likely to infuse the core Italian cuisine with innovation, and will offer you a chef's tasting menu. It's a very different approach, but equally delicious and I'd happily contribute my discretionary income to either place. My River Cafe experience, so long ago that it pre-dates this blog, didn't encourage me to try again. Though their team deserves credit for being the first to bring high-end Italian to London, I just didn't think the food was that exceptional for what it was (I was spending a lot of time in Italy at the time so comparing accordingly). For me, the restaurant also suffered badly from its tough-to-get-to Hammersmith location and its industrial warehouse vibe, not an atmosphere I enjoy in restaurants. That's not to take away from the River Cafe's accomplishments: this is Ground Zero for Italian fine dining in London, their cookbooks have been hugely influential and the list of chefs who trained here (Jamie Oliver, Theo Randall) is extraordinary.

Utopian Franco-Italian fusion at Angela Hartnett's Murano

The computer that matched us said we were 98% compatible. As we mark five years of marriage, we acknowledge that it got us right on the headlines, but perhaps missed the fine points.

We both love opera, but he considers my Italians bombastic and trite, while I think his German needs editing and has difficulties making passion credible on stage. In the wine cellar, I find his beloved light French reds tart and forgettable, while he thinks my favoured merlot/cab sav blends are over-fruited thugs. We're both keen on history, but his obsession with battles and military hardware can try my patience, while he feels the same about my fascination with personalities, art and architecture. Both card-carrying "foodies", I'm sceptical about his classic French cuisine, which often over-complicates and has too many sauces and potatoes for my taste. He's unconvinced by the Italians.

Which is why Angela Hartnett's Murano is probably the best place we could possibly choose to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. (And my birthday.) Though Hartnett is best known as an Italian chef, the truth is that Murano's Michelin-starred menu brings us a culinary utopia where influences from Paris to Palermo come together to create the perfect fusion cuisine. Mr. Bencard feels French. The former Miss Ferrara feels Italian. Both are very happy.

Murano's pricing is elegantly simple: decide whether you're doing two, three, four or five courses, each with a set price, then pick your food. While options are laid out in what would be a traditional Italian order of dining, if you want to start with something from the third course, and follow up with two dishes from the first, they're happy to oblige. We went for four. Given the delicate serving sizes and the extras (amuse bouche, a bit of charcuterie, breads, pre-desert, petit four) this is the right level if you're hungry. Five would probably be excessive, and three would be more than sufficient ... but then you'd miss out on too much of the magic coming out of the kitchen.

I started with rabbit tortellini in one of those light but flavour-packed sauces that demands you use a bit of bread to mop up every bit. (One of the earliest life lessons taught to me by my revered Sicilian grandfather. No wonder I've always had a weight problem.) Piers admittedly won the contest on this course with a salmon tartare that was exceptionally balanced, with rich fish, creamy dressing, crunchy veg and citric fruit combining to deliver a sunny Mediterranean afternoon on a plate. I wouldn't have traded, however, as I would have missed out on the Valpolicella that proves you can have light red that's also mellow and fruity. (Made by Italians, naturally.)

On to artichoke heart served with a blue cheese croquette. This tiny plate exemplified how fine dining can actually be Weight Watchers-friendly. Just a quarter of the heart, with a croquette the size of the top half of your thumb, yet packed with enough flavour to power a dish four times its size. It was a course meant for cutting up into tiny slivers, savouring each one with a rather bizarre wine from Slovenia that was overly-minerally on its own but a perfect match for the notoriously hard-to-pair ingredients. Piers, meanwhile, was blissfully ensconced in a crab salad and a glass of Reisling.

We split the cote de boef for our main. (This has a supplemental charge.) A dish to make me weep for all the vegetarians in the world. Simple, perfectly cooked, carved off the bone at the table. Perfection.

Though Murano has a fascinating wine list, we let the sommelier put together a wine flight for us. This is a great option, as she pairs the right wine for each individual dish, and we found every choice to be flawless. Note, however, that the "about" £45 each is quite flexible, especially when you choose to have a second glass of the extraordinarily tasty St. Emillion she chose for the beef.

If there's one dish on the planet that best exemplifies Franco-Italian fusion, it has to be pistachio soufflé. The flavours of Italy packed into the most classical of French processes, Murano delivers the best I've ever had. This is what-I-want-for-my-last-meal-on-Earth stuff, with a towering rise, punchy flavours and a rich chocolate sauce to obliterate any health effects of the egg-white based soufflé. Aware that it was both my birthday and our anniversary, the kitchen piled on the sugar with an additional lemon tart and a triple chocolate delice with almond brittle and black currant sorbet, decorated with celebratory messages in chocolate sauce. I thought briefly of those profligate Romans with their vomitoriums off their banqueting halls, so they could pause and make room for more courses of culinary delight. Disgusting to modern sensibilities, but in this situation I could understand their strategy. I let modem sensibility prevail and sent 2/3rds of the bonus desserts back to the kitchen. But not before sampling enough to assure you, dear reader, that Murano is a haven for those with a sweet tooth.

As if to drive that point home, the petit four arrived. Squares of palate-cleansing quince jelly and cannoli the size of your pinkie. "Delicious," I said dubiously of the frothy citric concoction inside, " but not really cannoli cream."

"So much better than those heavy door stops you made me eat at Missouri baking," he insisted. "Light pastry, subtle filling ... they've made them French!"

I decided not to argue. In marriage as in restaurants, fusion and compromise bring out the best in us.

Gauthier, Ham Yard are hidden gems in Soho's noisy tapestry

London's Soho has gentrified almost beyond recognition from the edgy home of the sex trade and alternative music I first gawped at as a teen-aged tourist. Despite new tenants and rocketing rents, there's still a whiff of seediness about the area. Maybe it's the remaining pornography vendors cheek-by-jowl with a higher-than-average homeless population. Perhaps it's the much-in-need-of-refurbishment interiors of many of its established venues. Certainly Saturday nights here do nothing to add to the allure ... at least for me ... with packs of drunken 20-somethings in from the home counties, boys braying and girls sashaying down the streets showing off their stiletto heels and spraypaint-tight dresses.

I can, however, tip you off to two places in Soho that leave the tawdry masses behind. Both have the feel of a private club: one for the refined grownups, one for the younger crowd out for a more boisterous time. Both, of course, will set you back a few pounds. Whatever the opposite of "seedy" is, it is most certainly not cheap.

We start at Gauthier Soho, a restaurant that occupies the entirety of one of the early Georgian townhouses that form the architectural backbone of the area. It still feels more house than restaurant, with an unchanged facade and subtle signage. You have to ring the bell for entry. Once inside ... where, of course, you are expected, because nobody turns up unannounced at this sort of place ... you're swept into the comforting care of an efficient staff. Most, like the cuisine, are French. And should you be unaware of the gastronomic influences coming your way, the bust of Napoleon topping the newel post of the main stairway (picture above) will remind you.

Gauthier no longer holds the Michelin star it won in 2011, but its food is exactly the kind of beautifully presented, subtly flavoured delicacy you expect at that level of fine dining. It is, admittedly, like many French restaurants of this calibre. Its differentiation comes from its private rooms. There are five here, taking up more of the overall house than the official restaurant rooms. Our hosts for the evening had carefully researched where they might combine fine dining with 20 people, and thought Gauthier had the most interesting menu choices. We selected from a short list in advance, off a menu where everything was tempting. They effortlessly matched diners to their pre-selections, and managed to serve everyone at once, with no compromise in taste, temperature or presentation.


We mingled briefly over champagne and an array of tasty little canapés; most memorable being a bit of seafood presented in a tiny, crispy basket shaped like a clam shell, but totally edible.  I missed the point of roasted carrots for an amuse bouche (too much like Weight Watchers), but the chef was back on stride with an excellent rabbit roulade with black olive crostini and winter leaves. Next a ginger and beetroot risotto, leading in to wild sea bass. All finished with a classic dark chocolate tart before the petit fours. The sommelier managed the tough task of matching wine across a variety of choices; the light red with the main course worked as well with my fish as with my husband's lamb. It's a rare thing when, having tasted their 'banquet food", you're tempted to return to the restaurant proper. But that's the case with Gauthier Soho.

My experience at the Ham Yard Hotel also went down the "banquet" route, but on a dramatically different scale. I'd guess there we were close to 200 at this annual work celebration, and the combination of location, food, drink and service made it one of the best corporate events I've been to in years.

The hotel is tucked away in a courtyard a stone's throw from Piccadilly Circus. You could walk by the entries from the main streets by a hundred times without ever knowing it's there; which is precisely the reason it has such an exclusive feel. It's quiet and elegant, yet also quirky and modern ... a quintessential boutique hotel ... and once settled for a coffee in its ground floor lounge areas you'd never believe you were so close to the neon-drenched, throbbing heart of London.  The central-yet-hidden cachet is, in fact, the reason I already knew about the place. It's a favourite spot for headhunters' meetings.

Just as I had a thrill of discovery the first time I wandered into the yard, last night I reeled in delightful shock at how much is under the hotel. There's a warren of impressive, double-height party rooms, a 200-seat theatre, several bars and a high tech karaoke studio that can also handle a live band.  It's all decorated in founder and designer Kit Kemp's trademark style: bright colours, bold statements, quirky juxtapositions. There's a 15-foot spiral track of oranges feeding the juicers in one of the bars. Giant film posters from the early days of cinema dominate walls. Life-sized crocodiles sculpted from driftwood crawl across wallpaper pulsing with oversized, three-dimensional butterflies. Enter the bowling alley, imported from somewhere in Texas, past a wall of vivdi bowling shoes arranged as an art installation.

As you'd expect, a place that makes this much effort on how things look doesn't settle for average food and drink. Entry beverages weren't just the usual champagne, but mohitos. Properly made, with plenty of crushed fresh mint. Fresh, sweet-and-salty popcorn awaited us in the theatre when we went in for the evening's speaker and corporate award ceremony. Dinner was a buffet of finger food, which can often be a disaster. Here, the choice included mini bagels with smoked salmon, mini burgers, rare roast beef on parmesan crisps and ... for those carb loading for a night of heavy drinking ... bowls of mac'n'cheese. Made with artisan cheese, of course. There were even a couple of salads for the health conscious, and these were interesting combinations of things like green beans, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese. The kinds of salads that stand as meals on their own, rather than a bowl of lettuce as an afterthought.

Just like Gauthier Soho, my group dining experience left me happy to come back and explore what's on offer on my own time and money. I'll certainly keep using Ham Yard as a central but secret meeting place. And if I ever want a private screening of my favourite film for 200 of my besties, now I know where to do it.