Palermo is not just street food: there are many other delicacies, sweet and savory, to try. To find out the best addresses in the Sicilian city we got help from the concierges of our hotels in Palermo to whom we asked for three of their favorite places.
Here are his top three: Dal Maestro del Brodo, the Arcimboldo restaurant and pizzeria in the tennis club Palermo 2, “especially for pizza,” and Trattoria Da Mafone, in the historic centre of the city. The common thread in the three restaurants is excellent raw ingredients.
In the first address, the kitchen is the market, and it could not be otherwise given that the Vucciria is a few steps away. The house speciality is boiled-beef with its broth, but the fish counter at the entrance clarifies it does not disappoint you. Should you wish for seafood, you can enjoy one of the best fish in the area: “Do not miss their Bucatini with Sardines alla Palermitana. Still on the subject of first courses, try Da Mafone pasta with aubergines, fresh mint, tomato and swordfish ”.
Simona recommends: La Braciera, “here they make the best pizza ever”, the Castello a Mare restaurant of Natale Giunta, “where the menu changes every two months; the last dish that surprised me, despite its simplicity, is the beef tartare with stracciatella. Obviously there were other ingredients but I don’t remember them “. And Bricco & Bacco “for exceptional meat”. Here the protagonist is precisely the meat, but it would be better to say the meats: Piedmontese fassona tartare, Kobe fillet, Chianina Florentine and the stigghiola from Palermo.
Marcello chooses a pastry shop, a restaurant and a multipurpose venue. “At Pasticceria Cappello I go without fail with their Settestrati, a cake with chocolate mousse, hazelnut Bavarian cream, chocolate genoise and crunchy cereals”. The pastry chefs Salvatore and Giovanni Cappello carry on the company which started from a small dairy and has now established itself as a bulwark of quality.
In addition to pastry, they also have a cooking and pastry school, the Cappello Pastry Academy and the Cappello Bistrot, just below the monumental Porta Nuova. Second address for Marcello: I Pupi, a restaurant a few steps from the eighteenth-century Villa Palagonia that offers a very tasty Mediterranean cuisine, with interesting creative ideas. “Tony is a friend and a good chef. Among other things, the fish works very well, do not miss the raw with flavored oils at home and salts from the world. For an aperitif, however, I often go to La Rotonda di Casteldaccia, a bar, pizzeria, restaurant, open from morning to evening “.
