We spent 10 days in Sicily, starting with two nights in Palermo and then driving around large chunks of the island before winding up in Catania. We ate breakfast either in our pensiones or Airbnbs; almost all lunches consisted of food we bought at shops or the supermarket and brought with us in our collapsible cooler, plus of course the inevitable stops for arancini, gelato, the bar snacks that came with our afternoon spritzes, and whatever other street food looked good. We had dinner in restaurants about 2/3 of the time, with the other dinners made up of arugula salads and other supermarket fare when we felt a dire need for fresh vegetables. Sicily in general has great fish, pork, veal, pasta of endless varieties, and mountains of bread, but if you want to take a break from carbohydrates, you’ll probably want to make your own meals from time to time. In most cases the only vegetables you’ll see on menus are fairly pedestrian mixed salads and simple grilled zucchini and eggplant.
Food is extremely cheap by US standards, both in the supermarket and in restaurants. Things like high-quality cheeses and cured meats are (to us) laughably inexpensive, mostly under EUR 10/kg. I think the most expensive thing I bought at the deli counter of one supermarket was bresaola for EUR 40/kg (and since 100 grams sliced as thin as paper goes a long way, we still didn’t spend much on it). Wine is also crazy cheap, particularly in restaurants—a glass might cost EUR 5 and a bottle maybe EUR 18-20 in a lot of places. The supermarkets had great wine also for prices as low as EUR 3.50/bottle, and almost nothing more than EUR 15. Drinks in bars and restaurants are similarly cheap—the standard price for a mixed drink was around EUR 4-5, and drinks almost always come with free bar snacks that can range from a bowl of potato chips to an assortment of meats/cheeses/baked goods/fried snacks that (for us) occasionally served as our dinner! When combined with the fact that there is no tipping and no tax added to bar or restaurant tabs, eating out—very well—costs very little compared to what it costs in the US.
The restaurants I will mention below are the places we ate at and would recommend. We didn’t make any reservations at any of them, just showed up soon after they opened for dinner (usually places open at 7:30-8 PM) and got tables without difficulty. This was in September, so in peak season you may need to book. (Another reason we didn’t make reservations was because most places do not offer online reservations, and my command of Italian is definitely not up to the task of talking on the phone!)
Palermo: Sardina PastaBar (Via dei Cassari 41/43). Fresh homemade pasta, very creative dishes. A bit more expensive than the places serving “typical Sicilian food,” but much more interesting. In the historic center, on a side street.
Castelbuono: Ristorante Nangalarruni (Cortile Ventimiglia 5). Delicious food sourced from the areas around this small mountain town, including wonderful mushrooms and meats. The meal started out inauspiciously when (walking in without a reservation to an almost completely empty restaurant) we were seated by a grumpy young waiter in a completely empty rear dining room that neither he nor any other staff member ever walked into again. After about 15 minutes of sitting there, we moved ourselves into the main part of the dining room and proceeded to have an excellent meal with great service from other staff, who had no idea we’d been seated in the first place. Among other things, we got a very fine and huge salad as a side dish—this was the only salad we had in Italy that was really worth ordering.
Piazza Armerina: Trattoria del Goloso (Via Garao 4). There are not a lot of options in this town, so we ate at this place that was recommended by our Airbnb host (and if you want a fantastic place to stay in Piazza Armerina, ask me about this Airbnb—stunning). The food, while tasty and definitely home cooking, was not particularly exciting, despite Google Maps reviews that raved about things like the roast lamb. We love lamb and ordered it, but there are better-seasoned and juicier renditions at any Greek restaurant in the world.
Licata: Molo 28 (Via Principe di Napoli 44). This place was about a hundred meters from our Airbnb in this little beach town and proved a very good choice. We got a mountain of mussels in white wine sauce (excellent), a very healthy portion of octopus salad, and a pizza, which was WAY too much food. Somehow, Mr. travelmad478 (who had ordered the pizza at the last second) managed to finish it. I think I ate about a quarter of it. Here again, nothing culinarily outstanding beyond the super-fresh mussels, but a fine experience—this is a town not frequented by tourists, and it was a lot of fun people-watching as we ate.
Siracusa: Ristorante Sicilia in Tavola (Via Cavour 28, Ortigia). Our pensione host recommended this one, as did Google Maps. The food was creative and the wine even more creative—I ended up with an “orange wine,” something I’d never had, and which tasted more like a cross between beer and cider than wine. Mr. travelmad478 went with a more conventional choice that was excellent. Our first course was a great starter of stuffed fried sardines, a local specialty—I can’t remember the main course, but I remember enjoying it.
Siracusa: Arrusti e Mangia (lunch only, Ronco Cristina 3, Ortigia). We parked ourselves here for a simple and excellent lunch of grilled whole fish (I think it was sea bream) plus a side of roasted red peppers, which were so fabulous that we would have put away a double portion if we could have fit it in. The fish, which most definitely got pulled out of the ocean a few hours earlier, is cooked at a blisteringly hot grill a few feet away on the sidewalk. This was a great experience food-wise and people-watching-wise.
Catania: Scirocco Sicilian Fish Lab (lunch only, Piazza Alonzo di Benedetto 7, in the fish market). This place is definitely on the tourist path, and well-marketed, but it was also really good. We got a “cone” of mixed fried seafood and some beers, and ate at a table outside overlooking the very bustling fish market on the street below. The food was excellent—super fresh, including a lot of little fish that you ate whole, plus shrimp and other fish. There is an indoor dining room as well, but it felt very sad and dull in there—outdoor is the way to go.
Catania: La Paglia Antica Trattoria (Via Pardo 23). There are numerous restaurants in the fish market—we attempted to eat dinner at one that had been highly rated on Google, but it was completely booked, so we ended up next door at La Paglia and had a great meal for decidedly cheaper than our original destination. We also were the only non-Italians there, vs. the other place which was full of foreign diners. We had a big swordfish steak and something else that I can’t recall, but for sure it was fish!
That was not the kind of place we were looking for, then or pretty much ever on this trip.
