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What to eat and drink in Sicily
It’s perfectly feasible to eat your way around Sicily, where traditional dishes and street snacks burst with seasonal flavors and top-quality produce.
It’s perfectly feasible to eat your way around Sicily. Spaghetti ai ricci di mare (sea urchin) tucked into a corner table at a trattoria, swordfish carpaccio on a seafront terrace, primeval offal at a market, veg-spiked arancini at practically any corner – whatever the time, place or occasion, this Mediterranean heavyweight's traditional dishes and street snacks burst with seasonal flavor and top-quality produce.
Fish and shellfish abound in sun-spun kitchens across the island archipelago. Over centuries, successive waves of invaders, poverty and deprivation spiced up dishes with foreign flavors and smart tricks. And in the face of a changing climate, innovative Sicilian farmers and winemakers are experimenting with new ways to grow old crops – and find new crops to replace old ones.
Pair all this with the island’s feisty lineup of cooks – Michelin-starred chefs to wizened nonnas (grandmas) – and the culinary experiences in Sicily are an earthy, honest, foodie heaven.
Share traditional Sicilian dishes in a Slow Food trattoria
Each town, village and even mountain has its own specialties and traditional dishes mirroring the land, season and ancestral heritage. Celebrate the differences with pasta alla Norma (pasta with eggplant, ricotta, basil and tomatoes) in a traditional trattoria in Catania, pasta con le sarde (pasta with sardines, pine nuts, raisins and wild fennel) in Palermo and agghiotta di pesce spada (swordfish with pine nuts, sultanas, capers, olives and tomatoes) in Messina.
Where to try it: Visit Slow Food member Me Cumpari Turiddu in Catania, Buatta and Ferro di Cavallo in Palermo, and Casa & Putia in Messina.
Indulge your sweet tooth with Sicilian desserts
Sicily’s enticing array of sweets and cakes crafted from homegrown almonds, pistachios, spices and centuries of know-how is reason enough to never leave.
Top prize for instant seduction goes to minne di vergine (virgin’s breast), an individual white cake that's iced and has a cherry on top. Other naughty-but-nice bites sold at pasticcerie (pastry shops) include torte di ricotta (ricotta cake), exquisitely sculpted marzipan fruits and cassata, an insanely sweet cake made with ricotta, vanilla, green icing and candied fruit.
Where to try it: Dig into Sicily's centuries-old tradition of convent pastry making at I Segreti del Chiostro, in a 14th-century Palermo monastery, and old-world Pasticceria di Maria Grammatico in Erice. In the baroque showpiece town of Noto, creative third-generation pastry chef Corrado Assenza keeps things edgy at historic Caffè Sicilia.
Explore world flavors with couscous alla trapanese in Trapani
In western Sicily, Trapani's unique position on the sea route to Tunisia has made couscous a local specialty. Ladle the aromatic broth of seafood, garlic, chili, tomatoes, saffron, parsley and wine over a heap of couscous as a primi (first course), or order it as a meal in itself.
Where to try it: At modern Osteria la Bettolaccia, reservations are essential.
Seek out a Sicilian street food specialty in Palermo
Sicilian street food doesn't get cheaper or more spectacular than Palermo's signature pani ca meusa – a soft bun stuffed with boiled and lard-fried calf spleen, lung and trachea. The other gut-busting old-timer is stigghiola (veal, lamb or goat intestines wrapped around a spring onion or leek), brought to Palermo by the Greeks 2000-odd years ago. The grilled offal is always served in chunks, salted and with a wedge of lime.
Where to try it: For monster-sized pani ca meusa in Palermo, go to celebrated sandwich shops Nni Francu u Vastiddaru and Porta Carbone. At Mercato della Vucciria, track down Rocky Basile, one of Palermo’s last-remaining mèusari, who hawks pani ca meusa from a hand-pushed cart loaded with a steaming stainless steel vat of boiled beef. For grilled-while-you-wait stigghiola, join the line at Mercato di Ballarò’s El Bocadillo.
Crunch into creamy cannoli
A raft of unspoken rules surround Sicily's cannoli, the iconic crispy pastry shells filled to order with velvety ricotta cream. Avoid anything prefilled; left to sit, the shell becomes soggy, destroying the blissful crunchy-creamy contrast of the cannoli experience. Ditch cutlery – eating is strictly hands only. Alternate ends between bites.
Where to try it: For classic cannoli, try Pasticceria D’Amore in Taormina. For gourmets, the deconstructed version at Kalòs in Agrigento is out of this world. In Syracuse, order a cone at Cannoli del Re.
Satisfy a snack attack with arancini
If Sicilians aren’t nursing a gelato (in a cone or brioche bun) during Sunday’s sacrosanct passeggiata (afternoon stroll), they’re popping arancini. The deep-fried rice balls – roughly golf-ball sized – are coated with breadcrumbs and filled with meat, sausage, cheese, herbs, veg and nuts of all sorts; pistachios, harvested in fall, are a die-hard favorite.
Where to try it: Flavors are wild and seasonal – swordfish and eggplant perhaps, or curried chicken and apple? – at arancineria Cantunera in Ragusa and Modica. Wash them down with local craft beer for maximum effect.
Keep cool with granita
Beat Palermo’s city heat with an old-school beaker of grattatella – ice shavings scratched by hand from a huge block of ice wrapped in a cloth and served with fresh fruit syrup. Islandwide, granita (crushed ice made with fresh fruit) is cool any time of day. Go local: buy a brioche to dunk in the crushed ice. Mulberry, pomegranate, pistachio and watermelon are hot August flavors.
Where to try it: Piero Caccamo scratches ice to order behind his Grattatella all'antica no Zu' Vicè cart at Palermo’s Mercato del Capo or in front of Teatro Massimo. On the Aeolian island of Salina, Da Alfredo by Lingua's pebble beach is famed for its granita. Ricotta granita with candied capers and toasted capers at Pa.Pe.Ro' in fishing hamlet Rinella, on Salina's southern coast, is celestial.
Taste Sicilian wines with the makers
Predictably, Italy’s second-largest wine-producing region is worth a tipple. Native Catarratto, Grillo and Inzoli grapes fuel elegant whites, and Nero d’Avola, Nerello Mascalese and Frappato yield robust reds. Don’t miss Sicily's only DOCG wine, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, blending Nero d'Avola and Frappato.
Get the inside story over a degustazione (tasting) with local wine growers in sumptuous noble villas on the volcanic, vineyard-clad slopes of Mt Etna and in 19th-century wine cellars in the sweet wine town Marsala.
Where to try it: In Marsala, Cantine Florio serves spectacular grassroots Sicilian cuisine at Ciacco. Get around Catania on a road trip by bicycle or car along the Strada del Vino e dei Sapori dell’Etna. The village- and vineyard-hopping narrow-gauge Etna Wine Train is pretty cool too. To overnight in an abandoned village-turned-winery, Tenuta di Fessina fits the bill.
Feast on swordfish and the ocean flavors of the Aeolian islands
Mediterranean fish and shellfish – particularly swordfish, tuna, mackerel and delicate fingernail-sized clams – are lasting foundations of Sicilian cuisine: frittura mista (a battered, deep-fried mix of shrimp, squid and fish), carpaccio di spada (raw marinated swordfish) and tonno scottato al pistachio (seared tuna in pistachio crust) are practically staples.
But it is in the eco-sourced kitchens on Sicily’s seven-island Aeolian archipelago that fresh produce and flavors peak. Hand-picked figs, pomegranates, capers and caper flowers, honey-sweet Malvasia wine, mountains of wild herbs and mulberry granita appear in spades.
Where to try it: Trendy Kasbah in Lipari does creative spins on local swordfish (fresh from May to September). Vulcano’s Il Cappero celebrates island produce with a 10-course tasting menu and sea views. On Marettimo, reserve at least 24 hours in advance to feast at Il Veliero’s.
Vegetarians and vegans
The natural abundance of top-quality, sun-fueled produce has lead to plenty of classic Sicilian antipasti, pastas and contorni (side dishes) that feature just vegetables.
Vegetarians can’t go wrong with caponata (Sicily’s emblematic appetizer of eggplant, tomatoes, olives and capers) and busiate alla trapanese (hand-twirled, spaghetti-like pasta from Trapani, with tomato, basil, garlic and almond pesto). Pane cunzato (open sandwiches), piled high with a choice of toppings, are meals in themselves (those at Malvasia on the Aeolian island of Vulcano and in Milazzo are legendary).
It’s a rockier ride for vegans: many island dishes feature butter, eggs or another animal product. When buying cannoli, check what oil the shell was fried in – traditionally it's pork lard, though many pastry chefs these days use vegetable oil.
