Sicilian Cuisine

I’ve been asked why I did not say more in the Sicily post about the food.  It’s a worthy topic. 

We tend to think that portions in the US are large, that Americans are big eaters, and while it’s true that you do not see many obese Sicilians, it’s hard to understand why not when you find that their meals normally consist of four courses.  First you have an appetizer (antipasto), then a pasta course (prima piati), then a meat or fish course (secondi piati), and finally a dessert, with a salad course possibly thrown in before dessert at the diner’s discretion, and finishing up with an espresso.  Along with this you normally would have at least one bottle of wine, if there are two of you.  I could never get through more than three courses, and even then I was utterly stuffed.  So how do they do it?  I have no idea.  I watched a young Italian couple at La Botte in Cefalu go through all four courses and two bottles of wine and look none the worse for it, and all I can say is that they took their time.  They ate slowly, amongst a lot of talking and laughing, and after each course they exited the restaurant for a smoke break, taking their glasses of wine with them.  By contrast, Americans tend to wolf their food in a rush, barely tasting it, as if they can’t wait to choke it down and move on to the next activity.  The Italians (this is not exclusive to Sicily) linger over each plate, savoring it, mixing it with leisurely conversation.  At a restaurant in the States it’s all about turnover.  They rush you through the meal so that they can move you out and seat someone else at your table.  The goal is to get at least three, preferably four, seatings in an evening at each table.  At a restaurant anywhere in Italy you are expected to take two or three hours to dine.  Essentially, once you have been seated, you own that table for the evening.  You can sit there until closing time and no one will bother you.  The waiter would never dream of bringing the check before you ask for it.

The fact is, I had very high expectations for the food in Sicily and was just a wee bit disappointed.  Not that I had a bad meal there, anywhere.  In fact I had some very good ones.  A pesto pasta lunch in Trapani (Taberna Ai Lumi) comes to mind, as well as two dinners in Syracuse, one at an outdoor café (Taberna Sveva) near the fort in Ortygia that included a delicious pasta with fresh anchovies (nothing at all like the fishy, salty, canned anchovies you get in the States) known as spaghetti alle Siracusa and a mixed seafood plate, plus an outstanding fresh cannolo for dessert; another at a restaurant (Jonico) on the coast northeast of Ortygia, where I had smoked salmon, tuna, and swordfish as an appetizer, spaghetti alle Siracusa (again!) for prima piati, and sea bass and tuna for the main course.  In Cefalu I had an excellent meal at La Botte that included marinated anchovies for antipasto, puchetti tonne for prima piati, and an unknown catch of the day with mussels for secondi piati and it was all fabulous.  You’ll never have fresher fish and, in fact, I ate only seafood, no meat, while there, because there is an assortment of Mediterranean fish to be had that you simply cannot get in the States.  Nevertheless, despite all this, I still hold with Naples as the capital of Italian cuisine.  The best pizza by far is there; you could eat the crust by itself and still think it was better than any pizza you’d ever had anywhere else.  The best espresso, the best sfogliatelle; you name it, Naples has the best.  Well, except maybe for spaghetti alle Siracusa….