I
After leaving the B&B outside Empedocle, we made a stop at MANDRANOVA, the vaunted olive oil producer with a lodgings, a restaurant, and tasting facilities on just off the main Agrigento-Licata coastal road. We had no reservation, but were welcomed when we pulled up, and ushered to the office where their oils and other jarred local products were available for sale. They were out of the pistacchio crema, which I had come to adore just a few days before, at hotel breakfasts. But I did manage to put together a nice package of marmalades (cedro; if you know about the fruits of the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot, you will be familiar with this citrus fruit, grown in both Calabria and Sicily, and limone) and a quartet of oils, 3 monocultivar oils and one blend. (Each .75 liter tin cost 18 euro; Mandranova oils are sold in NYC at Eataly for what I’m sure is a much higher price but of course, buying them at Eataly means a schlep on the subway or a short taxi ride (for me) as opposed to a longer and more arduous schlep on ITA and Delta. But your correspondent has recently taken to traveling with a hefty supply of packaging supplies: Masking tapes; scissors; bubble wrap; rubber bands; twist ties–don’t get me started here. Not to mention the admonition given to travel partner to bring large-ish suitcase and to pack lightly, therefore leaving plenty of room for overflow from my own checked bag.
From Mandranova, we proceeded on to LICATA, a small workaday coastal city that was the site of the first Allied landings of Operation Husky, which began the push to wrest control of Italy from the Axis in 1943.
booked LA MADIA in Licata online a couple of months ago, and we decided to overnight the night before our long-awaited lunch at RELAIS VILLA GIULIANA, a formerly private Liberty villa-turned-hotel. We had a good view from our suite of part of the city, and the vast adjacent fields (which were mainly dedicated to canteloupe at this time in May) covered by pale grey plastic to protect the melons from weather variations from night to day, and/or from pesky birds (I heard various explanations for the plastic from different locals; for whatever reason the plastic was stretched, it was less obtrusive than you might think, since the grey color made the acreage look, from a distance, like reflective padi fields, or shimmering rectangular bodies of water). Hard to convey, but here, unlike the vast blue-plastic coverings that mar much of the coastal landscape in Andalucia, the grey plastic covering really were not visually horrid.
Since the hotel was located on a hill, what we gained in view we lost in accessibility to the city center which, as I was told several times, was too far to walk, or a long but not difficult walk TO the center but a steep, uphill climb back to the hotel. so we opted to stay put and dine that night in the hotel restaurant, LA BOTTEGA, which seemed to have garnered very good online reviews.
LA BOTTEGA, LICATA:
(to follow)
