Here is everything we ate on our Sicilian road trip.

Plenty of pasta, multiple flavours of granita, and the best seafood restaurant I've ever eaten in.

After picking up our hire car near the train station in Palermo, we headed out of the city for 10 days driving around first the west, then south, then finally east coast of Sicily. I think Sicily by car is truly the best way to get to know this wild and varied landscape, and whilst as before with Palermo I’m working on some full ‘refer back to it later’ travel guides for our trip (the Palermo one is already online) here on Substack I just want to focus on the food in the sort of detail I don’t really have space for over on my website.

Here is everything we ate in Palermo.

So, open this up in your browser or the Substack app (I promise you there are so many photos it won’t fit into one email!), grab a cup of tea (or a Hugo Spritz) and let’s cover everything else we at in Sicily.

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Monreale

Monreale is the town that touches the top of Palermo with stunning views out over the city and towards the Mediterranean sea. We were there for the frankly stunning cathedral mosaics, but once we had spent so long gazing up at them our necks were sore we headed for a gelato shop I’d spied on the main square when we were climbing down from the cathedral roof. Gelateria Mirto it turns out has horrendous Trip Advisor reviews, but we really enjoyed our gelato and it was the spot of my first, my only gelato brioche. I wanted to eat one (with my go-to combo of pistachio and fior di latte gelato, obviously) because, well, who would not want an ice cream sandwich made from brioche with a double scoop of gelato? Rich, decadent, and yes once you’ve eaten enough of it with a spoon you can indeed pick it up and eat it like a sandwich. Indulgent, amazing, but I also don’t feel the need to eat one ever again.

Trapani

Trapani, of Pesto alla Trapanese fame has one other dish it’s famous for and that is Trapani Couscous: served with fried fish, a really rich, spiced fish stock / broth and plenty of fried local fish there are probably as many variations as there are cooks in Trapani, but the one I had at Ristorante Santagostino within our hotel Baglio Sorìa was generous, both rich and humble, and really showcased the area’s seafood topped with lightly fried sea bass, squid, baby octopus and Mediterranean red prawn.

Baglio Sorìa is a wine resort, so I’d be amiss for not mentioning their perfectly balanced spumanti which we started every evening with, and their beautiful red which worked lightly chilled with literally everything we ordered on both nights in the restaurant. It’s made from the ancient Frappato grape, very rare, very old and very Sicilian producing a light, fruity, easy drinking wine that still manages a good depth.

Elsewhere in the restaurant a big shoutout has to go to the first night guinea fowl ragu (both incredibly rich and incredibly light, a description I’ve recently found myself using for a lot of things we enjoyed on the trip) tossed with fresh spinach pasta served over ricotta and topped with pistachios. Divine. We had another citrus-forward version a few nights later, but this one had the edge.

Also, the canolo was excellent: crisp shell, just sweet enough ricotta, more pistachios, and for the citrus element served on a puddle of their house-made orange jam (no, not marmalade, orange jam). After this I had the jam spooned over fresh ricotta for my breakfast every other morning we stayed there.

Erice

Up in the mountains overlooking Trapani Erice is an ancient town built on what used to be the site of a Temple to Venus. Now it is a lovely place to spend the day exploring the castles, shopping for ceramics, and most importantly getting lunch (and yes lunch was worth the drive up and down again, including some hairpin bends you can’t take in a single turn!)

Ristorante Monte San Giuliano is a lovely trattoria where the locals actually eat, and which in summer also has a sun-drenched terrace to enjoy. Complimentary for the table as we waited for our food and tucked into the rough-yet-lovely 4€ half carafe of local white we were treated to the best chickpea fritters of the trip: thin, light, hot and crisp. Also excellent were the Involtini di Melanzane (aubergine) stuffed with ricotta and topped with a simple parmesan-dusted tomato sauce, but the other star was a perfect, fresh, garlic-heavy Pesto alla Trapanese-tossed busiate (the local Trapani shape) tossed with fried aubergine cubes and topped with fried potato slices, as is typical in the region. It taught me everything I thought I knew about Pesto alla Trapanese was wrong, and that as soon as the home grown tomatoes and basil from my parents greenhouse is ready I need to re-write my recipe.

Wherever you eat in Erice don’t stay for dessert. Next door to Ristorante Monte San Giuliano you’ll find the famous Pasticceria Maria Grammatico, named after it’s owner who learned how to make Sicilian pastries in the convent she was sent to with her sister when their mother could not afford to keep them after the death of their father, and who went on to become an icon of Sicilian baking. I could have gone for something complicated, but it was the day before the canolo pictured above, and I’d not had one yet in Sicily. Maria’s was light, crisp, just sweet enough without being sickly, and with just a couple of dark chocolate chips hidden inside. The perfect dessert.

Masala

We woke up to news of an Amber storm warning across the whole of Sicily the morning we were due to explore Marsala. And it turns out when it rains in Sicily, it really rains in a way it only seem to can in Europe. Happily though, we could still make the day all about Masala, because when else are you going to get Masala gelato (surprisingly sweet, very aromatic)?

We had a Masala tasting booked at Martinez - do book one if you’re visiting as it really digs deep into this Sicilian wine with English roots, and afterwards you won’t just see it as something to cook with: in most restaurants after when I wanted a digestif or a dessert wine, I turned to the masala on the menu. They also presented us with some really fascinating flavour pairings: it turns out dry masala is brought to life when served with squares of Sicilian pizza (more like a focaccia, typically topped with tomato, anchovies, onions and just a little cheese), and a medium masala goes beautifully with a few cubes of tender parmesan. When tasted with dark chocolate in the same mouthful, rubino masala (which is a bit like port) tastes just like my favourite Italian Mon Chéri chocolate liquors.

Marinella

If you look down from the highest temple overlooking the sea at the Selinunte Archaeological Park, you’ll see the resort town of Marinella, and it is the white awning of Lido Zabbara at the far end you’ll want to head for for lunch. Forget their private beach and deck chair hire with views of the temples, it’s their grilled fish and salad bar you’ll want to make a beeline for.

Whilst they do do pasta dishes, if you order one you’re doing it wrong. Buy a salad plate to enjoy while the catch of the day from the fridge case you’ve selected is cooked over coals. The concept is simple: in the middle of the dining room there is a giant fridge full of Sicilian salads and antipasto, and every time a dish empties the chef will bring a new one. Obviously avoid the things that won’t like this treatment like the chickpea fritters, but otherwise this is an excellent way to taste a little bit of so many different local dishes. I had cucuzza agrodolce (those long Sicilian zucchini we saw at the market in Palermo marinated in sugar and vinegar - agrodolce means ‘sweet and sour’), an excellent caponata, tomato salad, pickled peppers, sardines cured in local citrus juice, octopus salad, Sicilian salad (shaved fennel and orange), grilled aubergines, and aubergines in tomato sauce, all finished off by a massive serving of tomato salad, because: Italian tomatoes.

Not pictured my father opted for a spanking fresh mackerel whilst my mother and I shared a bream. It did not matter that we had to work around the scales; the flesh was perfectly cooked and impossibly fresh, and I’m going to need to recreate the sauce it came with of local olive oil, Sicilian lemon juice and dried (probably wild) oregano as it was the perfect tart accompaniment for the delicate fish without overwhelming it.

Palma di Montechiaro

Azienda Agricola Mandranova near Palma di Montechiaro - a series of rooms and a private villa in the middle of an olive oil farm - is up there in the top three or four of the nicest places I’ve ever stayed and I already want to go back. Yes the rooms and staff were lovely, the pool an oasis, but the real draw, and the reason I already want to go back is for the food.

The dining room is for residents only (or the courtyard, when the weather allows it - which is most of the time during spring, summer and autumn in Sicily - where everyone dines under the stars) and you eat whatever is being made that day, the menu appearing in the dining room mid-morning after the chef has been to the market or been to see the gardeners to find out what is ready in the vegetable garden that day.

We ate there for two magical nights, and the first course on each was memorable. Whipped ricotta, topped with confit tomatoes and lemon with crisps made from that day’s loaf (started the night before and baked in the morning) for scooping. The next night, crisp yet light aubergine meatballs with ricotta, basil and tomato sauce.

The pasta course on the first night blew me away, and not to use hyperbole by any means, instantly entering the pantheon of one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. Cauliflower pasta, with a sprinkling of breadcrumbs. Who knew? I was in the kitchen the next day, getting the method out of the cook responsible; I’ll report back when I’ve tried to recreate it. Also worth a mention was that night’s chicken: tender, with a crisp skin and served with roasted peppers and a breadcrumb-roasted tomato. Delicious, but not a patch on the pasta course that night, or the next.

I know it does not look like much, but I’ll never forget this soup. Tomato, potato, fregola, courgette, and tenerumi, the tender offshoots of the cucuzza, the long Sicilian zucchini I keep on mentioning, cooked no doubt with plenty of Mandranova’s excellent olive oil. The ingredients, the care taken with them, I think it might have been the best thing I’ve ever eaten. We could not believe our luck when they came around to offer up seconds. This soup was special, as special as the simple, unassuming ingredients that went into it, as special as the people who made it and as special as where we were eating it. This soup is why I’ll never get bored of food writing.

The desserts were rather good too; on finding out on the first night that my father and I hated coffee (and therefore that night’s tiramisu) they made us a delicate, light almond milk pudding, probably made with their own almonds that rounded off the meal perfectly. The next night, a flourless chocolate cake with a hint of chilli that was perfectly baked in a way I can never manage (not raw-gooey, but also not dry) served with a cloud of whipped milk and egg white. The cake reappeared at breakfast the next morning (I’m not big on sweets in the morning, but you’ve got to respect Sicily, and in fact the rest of Italy for this!)

The breakfasts at Mandranova were also the best we had; each morning I slathered their ethereally light and creamy ricotta (barely related to the stuff sold in our supermarkets) on their still-warm bread, drizzled with their extra virgin (yes I carried some back with me!), cherry tomatoes, a hard boiled egg (I challenge you to find me on a morning not starting my day with an egg or a tomato) with some mortadella, and their magical brioche. Sweet, light, puffy pillows of pure joy. I miss you already Mandranova.

Ragusa

Ragusa is a town in two halves, both rebuilt in the new Sicilian baroque after it was destroyed in the 1693 earthquake, and forms one of a cluster of similar towns recognised by UNESCO for their unique style. But naturally, actually I’m here to talk about their unique street food: Scacciata is a double crusted sandwich-like snack made with an olive oil dough, stuffed with a range of fillings. Spinach and sausage was good, and broad bean and egg (another classic Sicilian combination) was excellent, but my favourites were the caponata, and the slightly unexpected lasagna one, literally pasta sheets folded with cheese and tomato sauce. Happily (because I will eat literally anything in the mornings if an egg / tomato is not available and it’s not too sweet) this second option is common at room temperature on breakfast buffets in hotels of the area, the locals realising they needed something savoury first thing for non-Sicilians, and this being the local speciality. If, like me, you have a terrible habit of slicing off paper thin slices of a leftover lasagna and eating them cold from the fridge throughout the day, this one is for you! Enoteca Il Barocco, where we were eating these along excellent Ragusa white wine, spritz and other little dishes of local olives and cheeses (I don’t have a picture, but more firm-yet-fresh sheep cheese needs to be served simply drizzled with extra virgin and sprinkled with dried wild oregano), is to be bookmarked.

Also on your to-go list should be Mastrociliegia who do fantastic gelato and granita (their lemon was sublime, even if it gave me brain freeze!), but also recommended by our guide which we did not get to was Gelati Divini, if you need a second fix!

We had two dinners in Ragusa, one in Ragusa Ibla (the half of the town we were staying in, built on what was the old town) and Ragua (the new half built on facing Ragusa Ibla). Ristorante Locanda Don Serafino is a Michelin starred fine dining restaurant set into a beautiful cave in Ragusa Ibla. The food and service were excellent, and I have to highlight their incredible pigeon dish, perfectly cooked with foie gras and mustard sauces, as well as woodland berries. Also, my clever, creative dessert, drawing on Sicilian ingredients and their South American origins was genius: hibiscus ravioli filled with pear and mezcal, with lemon caviar and a sweet mustard sorbet. Unusual, delicious, and the smartest thing I ate in Sicily.

But, I think it was the dinner we had the next night in Ragusa proper that had the edge; Scale del Gusto overlooks Ragusa Ibla (great views of it lit up at night) and has a beautiful terrace. To start, I had an incredible red prawn tartare, piled on to whipped ricotta and finished with a generous amount of wild fennel oil. Very Sicily, very delicious, and a brilliant expression of uniquely Sicilian ingredients.

Honestly, I think everyone made a brilliant choice with their mains. Grilled lamb with a salad of lemon pith was simple, unique and very, very tasty, my baked pasta with sausage ragu (rich, indulgent on the edge of heavy but not too much, both tender and crisp), and the only thing that stopped the divine fresh pasta with a sauce of wild greens and slices of slow-reared pork sausage being a better choice was the puddle of taleggio cheese it was sitting in - tasty, but not friendly to my digestion!

We all shared a couple of canolo to finish; crisper than average, with a carob jam on the side. Lovely.

Noto

A lunchtime stop-off in Noto - another new Sicilian baroque UNESCO town that now we’ve done it I would 110% recommend you never drive in - finally found me the classic Sicilian sardine pasta with wild fennel and breadcrumbs I’d been hunting down at Trattoria Fontana D'Ercole. The pasta was delicious the sauce was brilliant (the currants! the pine nuts!) and sadly it confirmed to me why they say you can’t really get this right outside of Sicily without lucky access to the key ingredients; ignore all imitations made with fennel or fennel seeds, it really is the wild fennel that makes it, helped along with very fresh sardines. Also, this may be a controversial view as it is a cult classic recipe for a reason, but I think the breadcrumbs were unnecessary, and actually detracted from an otherwise wonderful dish, making it ever so slightly dry. I’d welcome thoughts from others who have also tried this in Sicily!

However, it was not the pasta I wanted to talk about in Noto, it was the granita. It was here I finally ordered a flavour other than lemon and realised what I’d been missing. Gelateria L'Artigianale Noto does a cantaloupe granita that is out of this world; served in a frozen terracotta cup I challenge you to find anything better for a hot day, not just a fluffed juice but with tiny, tiny chunks of melon distributed amongst the otherwise smooth crystals of ice. This was Sicilian granita at it’s best.

Ortigia

Our final stop, the island of Ortigia is connected to the larger city of Siracusa, which to be honest we only drove through as the island is the perfect place to end a Sicilian road trip, with just enough to see in a tiny space (it takes 30 minutes to walk it’s lenght), great food, and only 50 minutes away from Catania airport.

I have three Ortigia spots for you, the first of which is Schiticchio who do a literally perfect Neapolitan pizza, and also a rather good Sicilian fennel and orange salad with a hint of honey.

The next is Levante Gelato Artigianale, around the corner from Ortigia’s fantastic daily market who focus on local fruit-forward gelato and granita as well as all the expected classics done really, really well. Initiated into the world of nut milk granitas with a stunning cinnamon-scented almond milk granita (light, not creamy) on the breakfast buffet at Algila, the ocean-front hotel where we were staying I went for pistachio (creamy but not too much, with a strong pistachio flavour but really refreshing), scooped on top of my usual lemon granita. Why did I only discover this combination on the last day?!

The last place I want to tell you about - which was also our last stop of the trip and which finished it off perfectly - was the sort of restaurant that is just special in it’s simplicity. On our trip we ate Michelin starred dishes in a cave, local delicacies looking out over towns marked specifically for their aesthetics as the sun went down and obsessed over vegetable soup at a farmhouse table in the middle of an olive grove. But Cod da Saretta? There is a reason people were queueing to get a table, and I can smugly say we managed to get in both nights on the trot (the first night by luck, the second with careful timing!) Like all of the best places, it seems like nothing special: fresh local fish, simply cooked, with generous portions served on simple platters on a paper tablecloth-covered table, from laminated menus with a wine list that simply lists the colour on rickety tables down a side street in the non-tourist side of the tiny island by the sea, but without a coveted ocean view.

I had the special on the first night, which you can see above. The ‘seafood soup’ as described by the waiter was more of a stew, endless pieces of sparkling fresh seafood served in a rich tomato, onion and plenty of garlic. I had mussels, a perfectly tender octopus tendril, giant red Mediterranean prawns, a small, whole red snapper, a small whole grey, angry looking fish I couldn’t name but was very tasty, and a fillet of swordfish. Okay so I left the little fried toasts around the sides as it was all about making space for the excellent fish, but I’m proud to say I ate the lot. And that when I got home I managed to wash the red splodges out of my new dress.

Sliding backwards slightly, we shared a different starter each night between the three of us. On the first night, we had a frankly perfect Sicilian fennel and orange salad, here punctuated with plenty of salty anchovies and capers (instead of the more traditional olives), generously seasoned with dried wild oregano and fresh basil. Honestly, this is one of the best salads I’ve ever had, and also won over those who were a bit suspicious of fennel full stop, let alone raw fennel. It was obvious the fennel had been prepared in some way to stop it being ‘too much’ with the aniseed notes, and I’m pleased to report that I’ve cracked the secret: my own Sicilian Salad recipe will be published on my website on Thursday.

On the second night we went for the caponata, which when it arrived was nothing like the tomato-heavy tomato numbers we had been experiencing; it was light, fresh, each vegetable kept it’s own structure and character, whilst also blending together with hits of sweet and sour. What a way with vegetables.

Moving onto our second night, everyone but me did the same thing twice: a generous potion of grilled prawns, fat and meaty, and the grilled catch of the day, the only difference being that on the first night it was bream, but on the second it was bass. I was initially disappointed that the seafood soup was done so I had to order something else, but I can’t regret their seafood spaghetti: more tomato and garlic, and more mussels and Mediterranean red prawns, but this time also served with clams, smaller shrimp, baby octopus and sliced squid. Sadly, this dish was so big and generous it did defeat me with some pasta being left behind (not the seafood, never the seafood!)

I hope between this post and my Palermo food diary I’ve managed to at least scratch the surface of how brilliant and varied the food in Sicily is as you travel along the coast: and I’ve not even touched the centre or the north yet, they’re for a later trip (there is no question of if I’m going back or not). It’s both Italy but not, in the Mediterranean but with influences from around the ocean. And more than anything, it’s delicious.