I wasn’t going to write anything about Sicily. Why should I? It’s my holiday and I went to escape you lot, not pack you into my suitcase and have you steal our fun when it’s us that dropped the mortgage deposit on a holiday, not you. But I’m home alone with a cold and I’m bored and Question Time doesn’t start for an hour so here you go, here are the best bits of what we ate with no mention of the rubbish bits because I don’t want to share my side of the bed with a horses head:
Street food in Palermo.
Friggitoria Chiluzzo
They don’t have a Digbeth Dining Club in Palermo which was disappointing, but they have a street food history going back hundreds of years which is nearly as good. The pick by a country mile is Friggitoria Chiluzzo, a little spot by the harbour full of locals. It’s the panelle sandwich they all come for – chickpea flour fritter and potato croquette sandwiched between two slices of bread. Carb cubed, morish and suprisingly not too dry. Add some caponata, a portion of fried aubergine, two large beers and you have a bill for five euros. No wonder it’s always rammed.
Ke Palle
We ate a lot of arancini and this is the best of the streetfood vendors for your fix of deep fried rice balls. Without going into full geek mode, the thing that made it the best was the texture of the rice which still retained a little bite and avoided clagginess. The more traditional fillings were very good, but it was two that veered a little off-course that stole it: first a filling of chicken curry and another with nutella that had a brioche-like casing. Really superb.
Drinks in Palermo. Specifically Negroni.
Two to mention here a few seconds walk away from each other: Bar Garibaldi describes itself rather wonderfully as a ‘working class cocktail bar’ which is perhaps the most endearing thing I’ve heard since the ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ scene in Elf. We drank all night here and left with a joint bill of about £30. Loved it. Better drinks were had at Botteghi Colletti for significantly more money. A speakeasy 1940’s vibe except everyone has piled out on to the street, thus defeating the point. Great negroni. Killer soundtrack.
Special shoutout to Bar Bocum which I initially hated but ended-up loving thanks to complimentary arancini filled with prawns that were the best we ate across the island. Cocktails were around £14 a pop which makes them the most expensive by a distance, but we stayed for several which tells you all you need to know.
Cefalu. Booze, grub, and the greatest lasagne in the world.
I knew I’d love Cefalu because I’d seen it approx. nine million times on Cinema Paradiso. Nine million might be an exaggration. Maybe six million. Whether sat in the square by the Duomo, or looking down it from the top of La Rocca, it’s a pretty place where the city ends and the sea starts with little gap. Drinks were a mixed bag, though perhaps our favourite place was St George; an English ‘pub’ that is nothing like an English pub, ran by two young Italians who happen to speak perfect English. Cheap, well made drinks including a killer negroni sblagiato.
Galleria is where you should be heading in Cefalu for a nice meal in pretty surroundings. We had a very nice meal there including a carpaccio of slow cooked suckling pig, with peach, honey, and almonds. Or you could save a lot of money by eating the lasagne for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Capricio Sicilano. A mixture of pork, veal, and beef, with three cheeses and a little heat. It is my life goal to recreate this dish.
Tenuta Regaleali
Quite simply heaven and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. A vineyard in the middle of nowhere, high up in the mountanous region of Siciliy. Despite the fact that they have seven rooms we were the only people there because they limit the number of people on the premises for couples to give them the maximum experience. Lunch is a lengthy tasting with some exceptional wines, then down to the pool with it’s outdoor bed and fully stocked fridge, up to the highest point of the vineyard for sunset and then dinner in the table laid in the courtyard. Roberto, our host for the stay, was exceptional in every way. The wines are fantastic and plentiful; the food (especially the homemade ricotta) as good as anywhere on the island. The pricetag of over £500 a night may seem a lot, though once the setting, food, and drink are factored in, a stay here seems a relative bargain.
Castelbuono. Of mountains and mistaken identites.
Ristorante Palazzioccio has been in the Michelin guide for ten years. It’s nice in a homely sort of way, even if they did try to pass off a vividly green pesto with fusilli as the white veal ragu with taglioni that I ordered. Still, the portions are huge and they’re happy to decant 120 euro bottles of wine into plastic bottles if you’re running late for a gig.
Better, in our humble opinion, was Zerokilometre, a catchily named restaurant who claim to source every ingredient from within 1000 metres, though doesn’t explain where they found the squid that ended up whole on a lunchtime plate. We ate here three times in as many days because it was consistent, the porcetta was very good and the pasta better than most.
Social media plays a funny part in holidays, as everyone is living their best life and putting on the gloss for every element of the holiday to make it look like its faultless. The reality is that nowhere is really that good – we had duff meals in San Sebastian with two months research. Looking back over the hundreds of pictures we took I can see that the food in Erice wasn’t great, and in Ustica it would appear that we chose badly; maybe the dishes, maybe the places themselves. If you find yourself reading this because you too are going to Sicily please drop me an email: you can have my notes and my thoughts on the good and the bad. It’s a beautiful part of the world that is still recovering from the reputation of a certain crime syndicate.
need a taxi to the hotel? A2B have got you
Meat and One Veg 