Sicily

The benchmark spleen-sandwich joint in Palermo, on Piazza Marina near the harbour. Open till 2 a.m. and the late-night call of every Palermitan.

Pane ca' meusa is veal spleen and lung, boiled, sliced, fried in lard, piled into a sesame-seeded vastedda roll. You order it 'schietto' (single — just spleen and a squeeze of lemon) or 'maritato' (married — with grated caciocavallo or ricotta on top). It sounds extreme and it's tender, savoury, deeply unglamorous in the best way. Franco's place is the one Anthony Bourdain came for and the Palermitani still go. €3, eaten standing, washed down with a Birra Messina. Pani e panelle (chickpea fritters in bread) is the vegetarian default.

A no-frills street-food window on Piazza Kalsa — locals lining the curb at lunch, no seating, the best panelle in the city.

Panelle are chickpea-flour fritters fried hot, stacked into a soft sesame roll with a squeeze of lemon. Crocchè are mashed-potato fritters cooked in the same oil. Order one of each, salt them, eat them on the curb. Family-run for three generations, open since the 1940s. €3 for a sandwich. Cash only. The other window on the square is the competitor; both are worth doing. Open till the food runs out, usually around 3 p.m.

Arancine specialists with two locations in the Palermo centre — the freshest rice balls in the city, fried to order in front of you.

In Palermo it's arancina (feminine, round like an orange — arancia), in Catania it's arancino (masculine, conical). Both cities will fight you on this. Ke Palle is the Palermo benchmark: fifteen rotating fillings, each a fist-sized fried saffron-rice ball, ordered from the counter and handed over in a paper wrap. The classics — al ragù (meat sauce) and al burro (ham, cheese, béchamel) — are the order. The seasonal ones (pistachio, swordfish, eggplant) reward repeat visits. €3 each, eaten standing.

The market that opens around 7 a.m. for produce and turns into a street-food alley by sundown — charcoal grills, plastic stools, the smell of lard hitting fire.

Capo runs along Via Carini and Via Beati Paoli, north of Quattro Canti. Daytime: a working market for produce, fish, butchery, spice. Late afternoon onward: the stigghiolari fire up portable grills over coals on the street and char-grill stigghiole — lamb or veal intestines wound around scallions, salted, eaten on a stick. €2 a skewer. Sit on a plastic stool, order a small beer from the bar next door, watch the show. Also: pannulino panini, frittola (the offcuts of pig fried in lard), and arancine if the vendor still has them.

A working trattoria inside Catania's Pescheria — wedged between the fishmongers, lunching on what they sold an hour earlier.

The Catania fish market is a fifteen-minute spectacle of shouting, gutting, and tuna heads on ice — and the four or five restaurants tucked into it eat better than anything else in the city. Antica Marina is the most respected. Twelve tables, a chalkboard menu, no English version. Order whatever's marked 'oggi' (today). The raw fish platter (crudo) is the show: gambero rosso, red prawn from Mazara, scallops, oysters. Spaghetti with sea urchin in season (October–April) is the dish people come for. Book lunch, not dinner.

A sandwich shop and salumeria at the entrance to Ortigia's daily market — the most famous panini in southeast Sicily, built theatrically by hand.

Andrea Borderi runs the counter, narrates every panino, makes you taste five cheeses before you've ordered, and constructs sandwiches the size of small handbags using local provolone, mortadella, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, pistachio cream, anchovies, and whatever else he's pulling off the shelf that day. Lunch only — they shut around 4 p.m. The line forms by 11; ticket system. Eat it standing outside in Via Trento with a glass of wine from one of the adjacent stalls. €10–15. Don't try to order a panino like a normal sandwich; let Andrea cook.

Family-run since 1951 in Borgo Vecchio market — the trattoria Anthony Bourdain put on his short list of Sicilian benchmarks, still entirely deserved.

The Bonomo family, three generations, twenty tables, a kitchen that runs on whatever came off the boat that morning. Polpo bollito (boiled octopus on lemon), spaghetti with sea urchin roe in season, involtini di spatola (scabbard fish rolled around breadcrumbs, pine nuts, currants — the sailor's dish), and a tasting plate of buccellati at the end. Reservation essential on weekends. The buccellati come from Pasticceria Oscar, two doors down — they don't make their own and they don't pretend to.

A 1970s neighbourhood trattoria slightly off the tourist track in Olivuzza — the locals' default for a long Palermo Sunday lunch.

A ten-minute walk from the centre, on Via d'Ossuna, family-run since 1979. Pasta con le sarde — bucatini with fresh sardines, wild fennel, pine nuts, and currants — is the city's defining pasta and the version here is the textbook reference. The fritti misti antipasto (panelle, crocchè, mini arancine, fried artichokes) is the right opener. Sunday lunch is the show; you'll be the only foreigners. €25–35 per head. Lunch and Sunday brunch only — closed for dinner Sun and all day Mon.

Catania's most beloved modern-traditional trattoria, on Piazza Turi Ferro near the opera — Stanley Tucci-approved for Searching for Italy.

'Cumpari' is Sicilian for close friend; Turiddu is short for Salvatore. The whole pitch is feeling like you're at a friend's house, with the chef cooking out of an open kitchen. Pasta alla Norma — bucatini with fried eggplant, tomato, salted ricotta, and basil — was invented in Catania, named after Bellini's opera, and the version here is the city's reference. The caponata is sweet-sour, generous with the capers, served at room temperature on day-old bread. Excellent natural wine list. €40–55 per head. Book a day ahead.

The eccentric, slightly bohemian one in Ortigia — mismatched tablecloths, antique dolls on the wall, a hand-painted chalkboard menu, and a kitchen that's been quietly serious about local ingredients for forty years.

A few tables on a quiet alley near the Apollo temple. The aunt-and-niece team focuses on what's at the market that morning — heavy on vegetables, octopus, rabbit (coniglio in agrodolce — sweet-sour rabbit with capers and raisins — is the classic), homemade tagliolini. The vegetable antipasti are not a table-filler but a full course: nine or ten plates of marinated eggplant, stuffed tomatoes, panelle, fava purée. Two hours minimum, no rushing.

A pasta-and-fish trattoria on Via Cavour in Ortigia. No reservations; tiny dining room; one of the best red shrimp pastas on the island.

Small kitchen, open all day, run by a husband-and-wife team for over twenty years. The pasta is made daily — paccheri, busiate, tagliatelle — and dressed with what's in the market: red prawn from Mazara, bottarga from Favignana, sea urchin in season, swordfish in summer. No reservations: come at 12:30 or 7:30 to skip the wait. €25–35 per head. Cash preferred. Closed Tuesdays.

A 1960s neighbourhood pizzeria in the Politeama district — the locals' default for Friday-night Palermo pizza and a respected sfincione.

Sfincione is Palermo's pizza — thick, focaccia-like, with tomato, anchovy, breadcrumbs, caciocavallo, no mozzarella. The version at Biondo is one of the city's most defended. They also do regular Neapolitan-style pizzas (the diavola with salsiccia, fior di latte, and pepperoncino is famously good). Family-run since 1965, packed with Palermitani, never overrun by tourists. €15–25 per head. Open for dinner only. Closed Mondays.

A seaside trattoria in the fishing village of Brucoli, exactly between Catania and Syracuse — the right stop on the drive south, with a seafront terrace and fish off the boat that morning.

Brucoli sits 40 minutes south of Catania, an hour north of Syracuse, and is not somewhere you'd otherwise stop. The reason to stop is I Rizzari — a small, family-run seafood trattoria right on the water, the kind of place Katie Parla and Lonely Planet quietly both have on their Sicily list. The spaghetti with sea urchin is the dish people drive in for; gambero rosso crudo from Mazara, raw and almost-sweet, is the other order. Lunch is the move — book a table on the terrace, two hours minimum, fish chosen from a tray brought to the table. Book at least two days ahead in summer.

Marco Baglieri's Michelin-starred Noto Alta restaurant — modern Sicilian cooking with a German pastry-school accent, in a glass-walled cellar room across from the Crocifisso church.

Marco grew up in Germany, returned to Noto, and brought a precision to Sicilian cooking that you don't often find in the south. Two tasting menus — one fish, one meat — each six or seven courses, plus à la carte. The artichoke-and-anchovy starter and the braised-onion tortello with rabbit ragù are the dishes you'll think about a week later. The glass cellar wall lets you watch the somm pull bottles. Marco's mother runs Dammuso, the family trattoria, two blocks away — the casual version. Book three weeks ahead for dinner in season.

Now relocated to a former farmhouse between Calabernardo and Lido di Noto — modern Sicilian dining in a candlelit stone courtyard. Sicily's loveliest dinner setting.

A husband-and-wife project that moved out of downtown Noto in the last few years and only got better for it. The courtyard, lit at dusk, with a wisteria over the dining tables, makes the case before the food does. The kitchen runs a tight tasting menu of six to eight courses — modern Sicilian, generous on vegetables and seafood, with serious wine pairings from the Etna and Vittoria regions. Service is warm without being intrusive. Drive out — taxi to and from Noto is easy. €100–150 per head with wine pairings.

The Michelin-starred vegetable-only restaurant inside Therasia Resort on Vulcano — chef Davide Guidara turns the Aeolian garden into the most thoughtful kitchen on the islands.

Eight courses, no meat, no fish, no compromise. Guidara cooks vegetables grown almost entirely on the resort's own land — capers from Salina, tenerumi (a Sicilian gourd vine), tomatoes from Pachino, herbs from a single hillside. The dishes look like still-lifes and taste like the islands. Wine pairings draw on Aeolian Malvasia and Etna whites. Open only May–October. €180–220 per head with pairings. The dinner of the trip if you're on Vulcano.

A 16th-century palazzo in Palermo's Vucciria district turned into Mauricio Zillo's modern Sicilian kitchen — one Michelin star, the best restaurant in central Palermo.

A converted sculptor's atelier on Via dei Cassari, near the old Vucciria market. Brazilian chef Mauricio Zillo cooks Sicilian ingredients through a slightly more international lens — red prawns from Mazara, lamb from the Nebrodi, citrus from Ribera. Two tasting menus (fish and 'chef's choice'), plus à la carte. The wine list, curated by Antonio Lo Cicero, is one of Sicily's best, leaning hard on Etna and Vittoria. €90–130 per head. Book a week ahead in season.

On the most beautiful piazza in Palermo (Piazza Croce dei Vespri, where The Leopard's ballroom scene was filmed) — a sit-down Sicilian seafood restaurant with serious wine.

A Palermo benchmark since 1997 — one of the first restaurants to drag the city's fine dining into the present. The Galante brothers run it; the menu is sharply seasonal, the wine list is monastic in its discipline (650 labels, leaning Sicilian and Italian). The spaghettoni with sardines, fennel, pine nuts, and saffron is the dish the city quietly nominates as the platonic pasta con le sarde. Outdoor tables on the piazza in season. €70–95 per head.

A Trapani institution in the Jewish quarter — and the best place on the island to eat the western-Sicilian dishes that don't really travel beyond the province.

If you're driving west, this is the meal. Three small rooms in a sandstone palazzo on Via Giudecca, run by chef Pino Maggiore for thirty years. Cous cous di pesce — fish couscous in a saffron-tomato broth, an Arab-Sicilian dish brought back by Trapani fishermen — is the headline. Busiate al pesto trapanese (the local pasta with a raw-almond, tomato, and basil pesto) is a close second. The wine list runs heavy on Erice and Marsala. €40–55 per head. Closed Mondays.

The Michelin-starred restaurant at the Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo — sixteen seats on a bougainvillea-covered terrace, Etna to one side, the Ionian below, the view doing half the work.

Named for the German painter who put Taormina on the tourist map in the 1870s. Sicilian chef Roberto Toro cooks confident, restrained Mediterranean food — Mazara red prawn, Pachino tomatoes, Mozia sea salt, Bronte pistachios, all sourced within the island. The room is intimate (sixteen seats, all outdoor in season), service is unhurried, the wine list leans heavy on Etna and the Aeolians. Open seasonally, dinner only. The most photographed dinner setting in Sicily, and rare among scenic-view restaurants in that the food earns the view rather than the other way around.

A Michelin-starred kitchen carved into the limestone bedrock of Ragusa Ibla — vaulted stone ceilings, candlelight, the cellar tucked into the rock behind the dining room.

Chef Vincenzo Candiano cooks layered, ambitious Sicilian food in what feels like the world's most theatrical cave. The room was excavated from the rock under the Church of Miracles centuries ago; the La Rosa family converted it to a fine-dining restaurant in 2005 and earned its Michelin star early. Two tasting menus and à la carte; the wine list runs 2,000+ labels with serious depth on Sicilian and Italian. €110–160 per head. Book three weeks ahead in season — the room only seats 24.

Pino Cuttaia's two-Michelin-star kitchen in the small south-coast town of Licata — "la cucina della memoria", the cuisine of memory. The deepest Sicilian fine-dining experience on the island.

Cuttaia grew up in Licata, was taken north to Turin as a teenager, learned to cook in Piemontese kitchens (Il Sorriso, Il Patio), then came home in 2000 and opened La Madia. Two Michelin stars since 2009 and counting. The menus are autobiographical — childhood memories of Sicilian fishing and farm life, rebuilt as fine dining. Three tasting paths (Stairs of Sicily, Views of the Sea, The Illusion). If you're doing the Valley of the Temples and need a south-coast meal that justifies the detour, this is it. €140–200 per head. Closed Tuesdays and Sunday dinner.

A waterfront granita bar in Lingua on Salina — universally agreed to be the best granita in the Aeolian Islands, possibly in Sicily.

Alfredo opened this place in the 1960s on the seafront of Lingua, the tiny village at the south end of Salina. The granita is made with raw Sicilian almonds, mulberry from Salina's own trees, and lemon — the texture is the gold standard, slow-stirred, never overworked. Eat it on the curb watching the ferries go past. The pane cunzato (a flat bread loaded with tomato, anchovy, capers, olive oil, oregano) is the other order — €10, lunch for two. Open May through October only.

Antonio Cappadonia trained in Bronte and brought serious gelato to central Palermo — single-origin pistachio, milk from a single Madonie dairy, no commercial bases.

A small shop on Via Nicolò Garzilli that serves what most Sicilian gelaterias claim to: real pistachio of Bronte (the green-gold variety from the Etna foothills, DOP-protected), real Sicilian almonds, real Madonie milk. The flavours are old-school — no peanut-butter-pretzel-mango anywhere — and the texture is dense, slow-frozen. Pistachio + ricotta e pera (ricotta and pear) in a brioche is the order. Coffee is also serious here. Closed in winter.

A working pastry kitchen inside the cloister of the Santa Caterina convent — running the historical recipes of cloistered Sicilian nuns since the kitchen reopened in 2017.

The Santa Caterina convent housed cloistered nuns from 1311 to 2014 — they baked the elaborate sweets you'll see imitated everywhere on the island. When the last nun left, a group of professional pastry chefs took over the cloister kitchen and revived the recipes. The cassate (ricotta cakes with candied citron and pistachio marzipan) and pasta di mandorla are flawless; the cannoli shells are fried that morning and filled the moment you order. Come right at opening (10 a.m.) before the queue starts. Inside the cloister itself — the architecture is half the visit.

A small gelateria on one of Ortigia's prettiest streets, beside the cathedral — quiet rotating list of artisanal flavours and a perfect outdoor terrace.

Right beside Ortigia's Baroque duomo, on Via Roma. Compact menu, all made on-site, all with Sicilian ingredients. Fiordilatte (a milk-based gelato without any flavouring beyond the cream itself) is the test — the version here is exemplary. The pistachio is Bronte. Order one of each in a brioche col tuppo, sit on the cathedral steps, and you've had Sicily's most photographed breakfast.