Sicily Restaurants: Reviews & Recommendations

[Jeanne]

Looking for information on travel and food in Sicily; please respond if you have travelled there recently. Thanks, Jeanne

[anil]

Recently as in ? One year ? Year 2002 ?

[macrosan]

I was in Taormina last August, Jeanne. My arrival seemed to set Mount Etna off, and we left a few days before they had to close the airport  

What would you like to know ?

[anil]

Sicily is a good place to go and do nothing -- Just unwind. However, some of

us cannot get more than a week+ off at a time.

[buzbar]

Sicily is very cool spent 1 month there last summer. Taromina is the best city I visited but all of Sicily was great. The restaurant food is not as good as I expected. I love the octopus pizza is good also. Check out the Greek ruins in Aragento very cool. Cefalu is also a nice town had some good meals there. You will find a lot of good seafood in Sicily. I was suprized to see the populatity of Smoked Salmon but very restaurant serves it.

[monkeymay]

I have traveled through Sicily quite a bit - it's one of the most amazing places I've ever visited. The island has really distinct personalities, depending which city you visit. Taromina of course is fantastic, very beautiful and international, and a good base point to visit that side of the island. Nearby is Castelmola - go to Bar Turrisi for a sandwich and a drink, the entire place is decorated in penises. (I kid you not.)

From there you can travel to Siracusa, a very Greek city, with the island of Ortigia a bridge crossing away.- there's an incredible piazza with a Baroque cathedral built on top of a 5th century B.C Greek Temple. It's very over the top. Guiseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso)shot "Malena" there. Go to Bar Paticceria Maricante on Ortigia - the brothers Marciante make great cassatas and cannolis. Also restaurant Gattospardo (also on Ortigia) is a great funky local hangout with good food.

Noto and Modica are two 17th century Spanish Baroque cities. If you go to Modica go to Antica Dolceria Bonauto - as much a museum as a pastry shop. The most incredible chocolate made the same way it was when the Spanish brought it back from the Aztecs...Agrigento is another beautiful place - at the convent of the Santo Spirito church you can put lire in a turnstyle and the little nun on the other side will sell you the pastries the convent makes.

Trapani - go see the salt flats and eat the cous cous that has a very North African feel. Nearby is the mountain town of Erice - go see Maria Grammatico at Pasticceria Maria. She makes the frutta di Martoranna, and has had books (Bitter Almonds) and magazine articles written on her.

And then of course there is Palmero -  the wildest and most intense of cities. Everything about Palermo is in your face - you'll either love it or hate, side by side squalid poverty and fabulous Mafia wealth. If you drive it be prepared -it makes a demolition derby look tame and organized!!! But go to the Vucciria -the open market in the old part of the city. Fanastic fish displays, produce that's unreal...eat at the Sant'Andrea, a great trattoria located in a little piazza in the middle of the market. It was featured in 'Midnight in Sicily' by Peter Robb, a must read book if you are going to visit for any length of time- it covers the Sicilian Mafia (which is seriously no joke in Palermo), the politics and ethics of the country. Also read "Pomp and Sustenance - Twenty five centuries of Sicilian food"

by Mary Taylor Simeti. It covers the conquering cultures that have influenced and contributed to Sicilian cusine and will give you a better understanding of WHY you are eating what you're eating. There's so much more... the Aeolian Islands, Lipari, Marsala, too much to be covered here.

I hope this start helps.

Monkey

[wingding]

Take a ferry from Trapani to Pantellaria, if you have time.The architecture [damusi houses ] are unique to the island,and it is a wild,magical place.Go fishing and exploring,and find out what fresh fish really tastes like.

[trillium]

I'm going on a last minute trip to Sicily next week for my dad's bday. Any don't miss eating or food related spots I should know about?

thanks,

trillium

[balex]

In Palermo, have a sandwich of milza. This is very antique street food. It is a stew of milza which is sweetbreads (ris de veau), stewed with other bits of offal, often lung as well. It is served in a sesame seed bun (this predtaes McDo by about 500 years), with two sorts of cheese and a squeeze of lemon. A real experience. Unmissable. Fabulous. Some people say the best example is to be found in the Antica Foccaceria di San Francesco, but it is a bit clean and hygienic. Buy it on the street, eat, repeat.

[hedgehog]

absolutely that is the place to have guasteddi.

The fresh buns are filled with ribbons of calf's spleen, ricotta cheese, strands of caciocavallo cheese and a drizzle of hot lard. They're the best street food of the city.

[trillium]

Anything drizzled with hot lard can't be bad! Thanks for the tips, I'll be sure to check 'em out.

Are there any foodstuffs I can and should bring back with me to the US? I'm secretly hoping to find really good homemade orange flower water and big, wild, salted capers, ohh and maybe some bottarga.

regards,

trillium

[Jim Dixon]

trillium,

While the old Sicily hands say it's a shadow of its former self, the Vucciria market in Palermo is still a food lover's wonderland. I had some kind of meat panino (not sure if it was the spleen special already described) served by a street vendor who used a sort of inverted hubcap wok-like device to quickly cook thinly sliced meat (beef or veal, most likely), scoop it onto a roll, and squeeze a half lemon over it.

Another good street food is panelle, thin chickpea flour fritters often served as panini. There's a small bakery in Cefalu (on a side street from the piazza near the duomo, headed toward the water) that makes really good ones.

In restaurants I learned to alway order the fritto misto.You get whatever was caught recently, small whole red mullet, incredibly tender calamari, sometimes langostines.

I've brought back bottarga, but I'm not sure if it's legal or not. I usually wrap it really well and stick it in a pocket, altho' this may not be a good idea post 9/11. The last time we re-entered from Italy was Novemeber 2001, and I had a block of dark brown bottarga double-wrapped in plastic and brown packaging tape stuck in a back pocket. After we cleared customs, which was more intense than prior trips, I realized that I was carrying a really suspicious-looking package. We hit the seafood market in Trapani one day and bought most of the stuff there.

You can also find dried tuna belly, called mosciano (sometimes spelled differently in dialect), that is a sort of tuna jerky. It comes in blocks about 2 inches square by about 12 inches long. You slice it thinly, drizzle with olive oil and lemon, and eat as an antipasto. I've carried this back, too.

The best salt-packed capers come from Pantelleria, and you can find them in even in small markets, often in bulk. These are, I think, okay to bring in. I've also brought back canned tuna and anchovies, and always a wheel or two of young pecorino. I've never been qustioned about the cheese, but if asked you should probably say it's aged at least 120 days.

We stayed in Cefalu about 10 days, mostly because I found a cheap house to rent (slept about 8, right on beach, $38/day). It's a nice little town, apparently overrun durng the summer but pretty quiet when we were there in October-November. The next town east is the Deruta of Sicily and has a handpainted majolica for much less. There's a lot of info on this Cefalu website. (Cefalu is sometimes called the City of Women because many of the town officials are women.)

I'm jealous....if you want to look at our photos email or call.

Jim

[trillium]

Ok, here is the trip report at last. I tried to keep it short, I swear. I even cut out a bunch of stuff that isn't food related.

I’m sorry to say that my dad wussed out on Palermo and we flew back to Roma a day early and just hung out, so no Palermo for me. Sigh.

Sicilia was amazing, so different than the mainland in many ways. It seems like an island stuck in another time in many ways, but only when you’re out in the country. The bigger cities bustle with the best of them. I loved seeing the groves and groves of oranges and lemons and almonds and olives. What wasn’t trees seemed to be grapevines, green hills and seashore. We saw many shepherds and their dogs out herding sheep. I didn’t know they still did that. And the sea seemed unreal in some parts, like the Platonic ideal of the sea that only exists in the collective imagination.

I speak Spanish, not Italian and that’s always got me by just fine before, but in Sicilia it didn’t work so well. I had trouble with the Sicilian accent, but adjusted to it over time. My father speaks tourist Italian and the strange part was that by the end of the day he would have trouble understanding what people were saying and ask me to translate for him. Since I have no formal training in the language (apart from my indispensable Berlitz phrase book) I’m not sure how I managed but I did. I would tell him what I thought they were saying in English, he would respond in tourist Italian and they would talk to me again in Italian. Yikes. Everyone got a big kick out of my father’s last name, Siciliano, which I think they found as amusing as I would if I ran into someone named Joe California.

I had nothing to do with the arrangements of this trip, my father asked me to come along to celebrate his birthday and I opted to go ahead and go at the last minute (about a week and half before we left). He choose 3 star hotels and restaurants from various guidebooks. If I had planned the trip, I would have done it a little differently, but hey, I’m not complaining at all.

Roma

Old Bridge:gelati right off of P. del Risorgimento, perp to the Vatican walls, huge, homemade and cheap.

San Crispano: gelati right of Trevi Fountain, if Alice Waters devoted her life to gelati it would taste like this.

Osteria del Dino: in the neighborhood NE of the tourist epicenter near the Vatican. I think he found it in his Cheap Eats book. It was already filling up at noon, we were the only tourists, the rest were lunching Romani. I think he only does lunch. It’s very tiny and has some of the foodstuffs hanging from the walls and ceilings. The dishes of the day are written on a pad of paper and brought to you by Dino. My sister and I had rigatoni all’ amatriciana (when in Rome and all that), then she had some boring but fine chicken and I had the best polpette (meatballs basically) dressed in tomato sauce I’d ever had. They really just melted in your mouth while you’re tongue went wild for the flavors. I basically picked what I saw flying by me on its way to other tables. My father had skipped the primi and was happily scarfing down the best saltimboca he’d ever had. We’re both cooks and food snobs (my sister got tired of one or the other of us saying “mine is better” about dishes we ate on the trip) so this is saying a lot. I also had the best insalata mista of the trip here, it was a mixture of young, peppery greens. When my father asked for the bill, Dino wrote the total on the paper covering the table.

Il Fornaio off Campo de Fiori: great pizze, mortadella grande and cherry tarts

Ristorante del Pallardo near Campo Fiori: My sisters favorite from a former visit. It’s a fixed meal place (including wine) and there is a sign on the wall that says something along the lines of “here you will eat what we feed you”. It was packed with tourists and the owners (well, the husband Giovanni, not Paola Fazi) do a whole schtick that I found annoying...telling you how to eat, giving you a hard time. It was a nice meal, very filling, lots of antipasti (lentils, tomato salad, fresh mozzarella, huge plate of proscuitto crudo and olives), fried croquettes (potato and a veal one), rigatoni all’ amatriciana, and roast veal with potato crisps. Dessert was a tart and some tangerine drink (juice, water and sugar steeped with the peels, I’m guessing). My father wondered if any Romani actually ate there and I said yeah, but they won’t be bossed around like this. Sure enough, a couple of old geezers came in and started sending stuff back to the kitchen. It was pretty funny…there was some shouting about “what’s the problem with the veal”, “there is no problem, we just don’t want to eat it like you cooked it” which sounded better in Italian. Giovanni found out we were from the US and brought us a copy of Saveur no. 8, which has his restaurant in it.

Monreale

We ate at a place the guy at the Carrubella Park Hotel recommended. I didn’t write it down because I thought my father was. He didn’t either. It was past the duomo on the right and was a Taverna if it’s any help. I had the most amazing grilled raddichio there, and a really good pasta with artichokes. This was the first time we drank Donnafugata’s Vigna di Gabri and god was it good. I don’t usually like white wines, but wow. I’ve never had wine that buttery and aromatic and flinty at the same time. I wish I could find it here in the US. Every dog in Palermo was howling that night and I woke up to watch the sun rise over the city. The mosaics in the duomo were incredible, a “don’t miss”.

Erice

Erice was cool and weird. My father was very much looking forward to dinner at our hotel, the Hotel Moderno, which was supposed to be great. I really enjoyed my bucatini con le sarde, it was the most complex version I had (capers, wild fennel, anchovies etc). I found out the hard way that ordering something alla Palermitana means its breaded and fried when I ordered my spada (swordfish). Not my favorite, too greasy. My father had involtini di pesce spada that he thought was overcooked, too bready and too greasy. I agreed. He also had cuscus di pesce. I liked it, he didn’t. It came with one of those plato di buon ricordo. I don’t think he likes the heavy fishy sauces as much as I do. My sister ordered pasta with red sauce (she hates fish) and the same fish I did. Since she was being so brave about eating fish, we set out to find some dolce. It was 8:45 and the piazza and all of the streets were totally deserted.

La Bottega dei Sapori, Via Vitt. Emanuele, 21 “Enoteca Prodotti tipici di Sicilia e Calabria”: My sister and I wanted to do some food shopping and the next day we found a really nice (thought touristy) place that I found almost every thing on my list. The woman minding the shop was very sweet and kept feeding us samples of Marsala and Zibibbo and lots of other stuff. My sister, who is 16 and doesn’t have the liver I do, got mildy tipsy from all that before lunch drinking. I bought capers from Pantelleria , a good size chunk of bottarga di tonno, some cactus flower honey, and a little bottle of some herbal booze from Erice. I also bought a small bottle of rosolio (the pink color was great) and some hazelnuts submerged in a jar of honey for my mum. My sister bought jarred sauces (with names that translate into the passion of sicily) and little bottles of booze for her school chums. Once I got home I was pretty sorry I didn’t buy any of the nuts, they taste so much better over there. I was also sorry I didn’t buy the huge jar of anchovies packed in oil, but I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if it had leaked in my very small bag. Everything was significantly cheaper then what you would pay for items of the same quality in the US, at least half price. She also gave us really cool posters from Florio advertising their Marsala (which killed me because it was 7 euros a bottle at the gas station in Marsala and I can’t even find it in Portland!).

Pasticceria Grammatico Maria (Via V. Emanuele 14): We stopped at a salumeria for lunch and then went and bought dolce here, it’s famous for its almond paste confections. My sister also bought some of their beautiful marzipan fruits for gifts (you can buy sturdy gift boxes there) but I opted for two bars of the siciliano torrone (almonds and pistachios) which both my partner and I have a serious weakness for. When I got home I discovered that morbido means soft. I had been sure I was buying torrone for the dead. It was expensive (10.5 euro each) but oh so good. I’m eying the second bar that I’m trying to save to give to my mum.

Agrigento

Not my favorite food area, way too touristy, but I ate my favorite meal nearby.

La Scogliera: I had the best meal in Sicily at La Scogliera, in Siculiana, which is a short drive from Agrigento. It’s on the marina and the sea is right out the front door. I had great pasta with pistachio pesto, shrimp and zucchini and then the best mixed seafood plate ever. The grilled swordfish and shrimp were amazingly good. This was the first time I could understand why people suck shrimp heads. Sweet and shrimpy goodness. Their digestive tracks were bright red, like their shells. Not something I’d ever ate before. The only disappointment was the calamari, which was too tough and huge. I think it had been frozen.

Foresteria della Luna di Balla: near Agrigento. My sister’s favorite meal of the trip. It was really good, but I have a problem with Italian restaurants that try to be French. I like Italian food because it isn’t French and it makes me sad when they do that. It was a fancy place and we got there around 9 pm. Totally empty, like almost every other hotel and restaurant we went to. There were no tourists and the people we talked to were freaking out about how badly it was affecting their economy. No matter what time of night we ate (7:30 to 9:30) we were frequently the only people in the restaurants we ate at in Sicily. This was the week before we declared war on Iraq and everyone was staying away, I guess. The waiter suggested letting the chef decide what we would eat and we agreed. We had spaghetti with bottarga and fresh tuna cubes, white seabass with potato scales and broccoli that tasted like it had been boiled for a while in butter. Semifreddo for dessert.

Kákalos: fine pizze if you’re desperate to eat something in Agrigento (I suggest you plan your meals for elsewhere). I had one with smoked pancetta, caperi, anchovy and chilli.

Sciacca

After we walked around Agrigento, we drove back to Sciacca, for what was my favorite part of the trip. Sciacca is a fishing town an hours drive back towards Trapani, totally off the tourist trail. My father’s Baedekers said there was a lot of ceramic painting going on down at the wharf. So to the wharf we went, parked and got out. I quickly noticed that my sister and I were the only females in the place and people were staring. Everyone was involved with something to do with fishing. It was really cool. We went in to Bar Charlie where I had the best alpine strawberry gelati ever and almost got killed when I walked into a fisherman because I was so into the musky, fruity taste. Ooops. We headed up towards the piazza and found all the ceramic shops. I was in ceramica heaven…the people were in the back painting and you could buy what they’d made in the front of the stores. I went crazy and had to be dragged away. My favorite shop was Bottarga della Maiolica di Accursio Toto. Mr. Toto was a really nice man and very happy I loved his stuff. If it was my trip, I’d stay at the Grand Hotel delle Terme in Sciacca (hmmm…hot springs) and visit the temples in Agrigento from there.

Cefalù

Osteria la Botte (V. Veterani, 6): By the time we hit Cefalù we were pretty maxed out on small medieval towns with duomos and mosaics (the one in Monreale is nicer). If I had Jim’s recommendations before we went I think we would have stayed longer, but as it was, we went, looked at the church and ate lunch and drove back to the airport. I had ok pasta vongole, and a really great filetto con pepe verde (with Marsala). I wish I could buy the same veal Italians do. It’s basically just really young beef, none of this chained up baby cow stuff, and damn tasty.

email for any questions

regards,

trillium

[Jim Dixon]

trillium,

great report....it made see those narrow streets in Erice with the patterns of cobblestones again.

We've been really wanting to get back to Sicilia since we went about 3 years ago. It does feel like a different country altogether. Our friend Jennifer, who was born in Trieste and speaks fluent 'Italian,' had a hard time with the dialect, too, especially in the smaller villages.

Jim

[docsconz]

Trillium,

Great Post.

Your trip to Sicily was a bit different than mine. You went to different places. I took my 13y/o son on a culinary tour with Peggy Markel last November. It was fantastic! We started in Palermo (The Cathedral of Monreale was stupendous) where my son and I met some distant relatives. They treated us like royalty. We had some great meals in and around Palermo, including a great pasta with lobster sauce in Mondello and fabulous fare at a restaurant in Palermo called Ai Cascinari. Other highlights of Palermo included Madama Butterfly at The Teatro Massimo, the street markets and puppets. Palermo is well worth a visit.

From Palermo we spent a few days inland with Anna Tasca at Regaleali. She is a very gracious and talented woman. From there we passed through Agrigento, where we had a picnic on the Greek Temples (Yes, we cleaned up after ourselves!) and continued on to a fantastic Inn called Eramo del Giubiliano. From there we visited Modica and Noto with the incredible chocolate workshop of Franco Ruta. Siracusa was our next destination followed by Taormina and The Grand Hotel Timeo with magnificent views of the erupting Etna. We had incredible and varied local cuisine all along the way. The tour ended here, but my son and I then spent a few days in Sorrento.

I can't wait to go back.

[trillium]

I was pretty sorry to miss Palermo, I really wanted to check it out (and go to the Nino Parrucca studio). Plus I adore street food and really wanted to have pan con milza, but hey, there's always next time. Would you go back to Palermo on your own next time? What was your favorite meal?

As for temples, I enjoyed our visit to Segesta the best. We had the temple and ampitheater to ourselves for hours on a beautiful sunny day. The story behind Selinunte was depressing with war looming, those giant piles of rubble and all the people who died during the invasion. Agrigento seemed like the Disneyland version of greek temples in Sicilia. The order we saw them in had something to do with it, I'm sure.

regards,

trillium

[docsconz]

I was pretty sorry to miss Palermo, I really wanted to check it out (and go to the Nino Parrucca studio).  Plus I adore street food and really wanted to have pan con milza, but hey, there's always next time.  Would you go back to Palermo on your own next time?  What was your favorite meal?

As for temples, I enjoyed our visit to Segesta the best.  We had the temple and ampitheater to ourselves for hours on a beautiful sunny day.  The story behind Selinunte was depressing with war looming, those giant piles of rubble and all the people who died during the invasion. Agrigento seemed like the Disneyland version of greek temples in Sicilia.  The order we saw them in had something to do with it, I'm sure.

regards,

trillium

I would go back to Pelermo on my own. I would stay (again) in Massimo Plaza Hotel across from The Teatro Massimo. It is an outstanding three star hotel that is small and extremely comfortable. It loses starts because it has no restaurant, pool or conference facility. The rooms, however, are quite nice. We tried so many wonderful dishes at Ai Cascinari. a few that stand out in my memory include eggplant "meatballs" and fresh cod in a sweet and sour tomato sauce. Other dishes that stand out from the trip include the aforementioned lobster sauce at Sapori di Mare in Mondello, ultra-fresh sea urchins just off the boat at Franku u Piscaturi in Porticello, panelle and arrancini we made ourselves at Regaleali, peperoncino chocolates at Franco Ruta, eggplant "cappucino" at Fattoria delle Torri in Modica, sardines wrapped in lemon leaves at La Foglia in Ortygia and red sauce with a special small shrimp at a private lunchspot north of Taormina. Of course the cannoli were great throughout. The best cassata was at the private lunchplace.

Agrigento wasn't terribly crowded while we were there. I enjoyed it.

I'm planning to take my next son on a self-guided culinary trip to Campania next November. I'm planning on getting some advice/suggestions from this site.

By the way, I very much recommend Peggy Markel's tours. She does an excellent job lining up exciting culinary experiences in great locations.

[Wiener]

Really enjoyed reading the posts. I am leaving for my first visit to Sicily on May 10th for two weeks. Can't wait to try some of the food you all mentioned. I am starting in Palermo and moving on to Cefalu and then on to Taoromina. thanks again all.

[davidbdesilva]

What great posts with tons of information. It puts longing in my heart to see the land of my grandparents (who were from Messina). Next summer is our 20th anniversary and I would love to spend it in Sicily. Can anyone tell me if the East, central and Western parts of Sicily are vastly different? I would love to stay in a town by the water with some nice beaches. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[trillium]

Can anyone tell me if the East, central and Western parts of Sicily are vastly different? I would love to stay in a town by the water with some nice beaches. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Hiya

Since no one else has bothered to reply, I'll put in my 2 cents. I've only been to the western half of Sicily, not the Eastern, but I can say that inland is very different from coastal. Inland in some places looked a little bit like what I imagined Ireland to look like, beautiful green hills, and in others was all about the agriculture (citrus, some stone fruits, grapes, nuts or sheep). The small coastal towns are all about fishing or tourism, but every where we saw the sea it was breathtakingly beautiful. Maybe someone else whose been to the west and east will be inspired to help you. My feeling is that the east side is the most targeted to tourism. Sicily has some facinating agritourismo stuff going that I thought would be cool to do if I went there under my own planning.

regards,

trillium

[Jim Dixon]

David,

See my post above about Cefalu. I've heard it does get crowded with northern European sun-seekers in the summer, though, and I'm guessing it'll be pretty hot, too.

We only saw Messina from the highway and ferry terminal as we crossed over to Italy proper, and that was it for the east coast. In October, when we were there, it wasn't quite so green, even on along the coast.

I've also looked at a lot of agriturismo sites (just google for Sicily agritourism) and they look appealing. I also want to visit the islands (read Tonnaro awhile back, about Favigno...Pantellaria sounds cool, too). Maybe this fall...

Jim

[docsconz]

David,

If you are looking for nice beaches and scenery stay away from the south except for the southeast around Siracusa. The south was apparently very hard hit by poor development after WWII. While there is a lot of fine scenery underneath, a lot of it has been spoiled. The best bets for beaches and scenery are probably the north coast including Mondello outside of Palermo and Cefalu, Taormina on the northeast coast (spectacular scenery) or the islands.

[docsconz]

Sorry,

Computer glitch!

Edited April 30, 2003 by docsconz (log)

[davidbdesilva]

Thank you all for taking the time to reply and give me very useful information. I hope to someday (read: sooner than later) make it to the island where my grandparents came from some 85 years ago and see the incredible scenery you talk of. Thanks again! David

[bpsklar]

Just returned from Sicily on May 24, 2003. Recent enough?

If you have big bucks and can find some of the small private restaurants you will be able to have the best food you have ever tasted.

In Taormina go to Casa Grugno. www.casagrugno.it

or the restaurant at the Grand Hotel Timeo (Il Dito e la Luna)

In Palermo Cin Cin www.ristorantecincin.com

In Agrigento Baglio de la Luna

You will bless me for these suggestions.

Bernie