In this article we’ll go through all the local specialities worth eating in Sicily, or that you can cook there yourself. That’s exactly what we did – we bought some things and made others at the apartment.
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- The compulsory breakfast or afternoon snack is granita with brioche, eaten standing up.
- The compulsory street food is arancini (for me it isn’t a top-tier thing, but you definitely have to try it and form your own view)
- The compulsory dessert is cannoli filled with pistachio or cassata siciliana
- The best places for street food are the Ballarò and Vucciria markets (Palermo) or La Pescheria (Catania)
- Dinner in Sicily starts at 20:00-21:00 – any earlier and you’ll be alone in the restaurant. Out of season that’s true even at that hour 😀
Fish from the morning market at the port. Pistachios from Bronte below Etna, harvested in September. That isn’t a marketing slogan – it’s the philosophy Sicilian cooking grows out of.
Why Sicilian food is different
Sicily lies at a crossroads of civilisations. Over the last 3,000 years it was ruled by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards and finally Italians. Yes, I know, exhausting. Each of them left a mark – not just on the architecture but directly on the plate. Knowing the context matters for understanding the dishes and the flavours.
The Arabs are the most significant gastronomically. They brought citrus, almonds, pistachios, figs, sugar, saffron, cinnamon, raisins and couscous. Without that Arab legacy there would be no granita, no cassata and no pasta con le sarde.
The Greeks brought olive oil, wine and fishing as the basis of the everyday table.
The Normans and Spaniards added techniques for preserving meat and fish.
The result is a cuisine that doesn’t use many spices but insists that every ingredient be perfect. Street food here isn’t a tourist attraction, it’s a way of life. Sure, in the bigger cities you’ll find pizza or kebab stands, but the real business is happening somewhere else entirely.
Breakfast in Sicily
Sicilian breakfast is essentially typically Italian – with one exception that sets it apart from the rest of the peninsula.
How a Sicilian bar works
A bar in Italian isn’t a pub. It’s an espresso bar where you get coffee and a cornetto in the morning. And it’s a place where breakfast is eaten standing at the counter. That’s what the locals do: they come in, have an espresso, eat a cornetto and move on. In two minutes.
If you want to sit down, of course you can – but in some bars you’ll pay a surcharge called coperto (more on that below). Breakfast in a Sicilian bar comes to about 2-3 €. In a tourist café with seating and a view over the square, easily three times that. When we had filter coffee, for instance, we paid 4 € for the cup alone.
Cornetto is the Italian counterpart to the croissant: fluffier, sweeter, with or without a filling. The most popular versions are pistachio, chocolate or custard (alla crema). In Sicily cornetti are exceptional – pistachio filling made from local pistachios is on another level compared with anywhere else. And once you’ve been eating cornetti like that, going for one back home is a sad experience, the quality is so poor.
And then there’s the extra Sicilian bonus:
Granita with brioche
This is the thing that separates Sicily from the rest of Italy. Granita is a fine crushed ice (not ice cream, not sorbet – something in between) with an intense flavour. The brioche is a fluffy sweet bun that you dip into the granita or eat alongside it. We first tried it in Milazzo and it was fantastic!
And in Sicily this combination is traditionally breakfast. But… it can equally be dessert or an afternoon snack.
Street food – eating on the street
Sicily has one of the richest street food cultures in all of Italy. Street food is relatively cheap, authentic and excellent. Don’t come to Sicily and only go to restaurants – you’ll miss out on a great food experience.
Arancini (or arancine)
Fried rice balls in breadcrumbs, with various fillings. They’re probably the best-known Sicilian dish of all. Honestly, they aren’t our biggest favourite. We tried our first at Catania airport, and we probably chose badly.
Classic fillings:
- Al ragù – meat sauce with peas (traditional in Catania)
- Al burro – butter, ham or béchamel (traditional in Palermo)
- Alla Norma – aubergine and tomato
- Modern variations: pistachio, seafood, cheese
And now the thing Sicilian cities go to war over: the gender of the word. In Catania they say arancino (masculine, a cone shape like Etna). In Palermo, arancina (feminine, round like an orange). This debate is more serious than it might seem – it’s a matter of regional identity and the locals remember.
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Arancini are best freshly fried and hot. Look for them at markets and in small shops, not in tourist restaurants or, indeed, at the airport 😀 Otherwise you won’t be putting them on your list of what to eat in Sicily next time.
Sfincione – Palermo’s pizza
Thick, almost like a cake, a spongy pizza with tomato sauce, onion, sardines or anchovies, caciocavallo cheese and breadcrumbs. Nothing like Neapolitan pizza – it’s a dish in its own right with its own history and pride.
Pani câ meusa – for the brave only
A Palermo street food special – a bun filled with boiled beef spleen and lung, fried in lard, with ricotta or lemon. It sounds horrifying, I know, but people in Palermo genuinely eat it.
If you’re not an adventurous eater, you don’t have to. But if you are – this is more authentic street food than anywhere else. In Palermo they’re proud of it.
Cazzilli – potato croquettes
Simple and excellent croquettes of mashed potato with parsley and pepper, fried golden.
Where to look for street food
Palermo is the capital of Sicilian street food. The Ballarò market (busiest in the morning), Vucciria (fish in the morning, bar district in the evening) and Capo are compulsory stops. Here you’ll have arancini, sfincione, pani câ meusa and fresh seafood at the stalls. We tried a mixed fried seafood for a pleasant 6 € with bruschetta and tomatoes. We sat down at a little table nearby and watched everything going on around us.
Catania has the La Pescheria fish market near Piazza del Duomo. At all these markets I can guarantee you’ll experience an atmosphere from another era – shouting stallholders, tuna the size of a person, colours and smells you carry with you all day.
What to order in a restaurant
Pasta alla Norma
Another must-have to eat in Sicily is pasta with tomato sauce, fried aubergine (oh my god, how I love aubergine!), fresh basil and grated salted ricotta (ricotta salata). A dish that carries a story.
It’s named after the opera Norma by the Catania composer Vincenzo Bellini. Legend has it that after the playwright Nino Martoglio first tasted it, he exclaimed: “This is a real Norma!” – meaning a masterpiece.
Pasta alla Norma is everywhere in Sicily, but the quality varies. The key is two things, which I can confirm from cooking it at home: properly fried aubergine (not boiled) and genuine ricotta salata – dry, salty, intense. Not fresh ricotta.
Pasta con le sarde
Pasta with sardines, wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts and saffron. If pasta alla Norma is Sicilian comfort food, pasta con le sarde is culinary history on a plate. Sardines definitely belong in pasta; on pizza, not so much. Careful there – I had one like that in San Vito Lo Capo and wouldn’t order it again.
Busiate alla Trapanese
Top tier! We cook this at home, or at least we make the pesto. A local speciality of northwestern Sicily – busiate pasta (spiral-shaped) with pesto alla Trapanese: tomatoes, almonds, garlic, basil, olive oil. No parmesan, no pine nuts – simpler and fresher than Genoese pesto. Typical of the Trapani area.
Caponata
A Sicilian sweet-and-sour vegetable dish of aubergine, celery, tomatoes, olives and capers, seasoned with vinegar and sugar (agrodolce). Served cold as antipasto or a side. Every Sicilian family has its own recipe and every one insists theirs is the only correct one.
Seafood and fish
In Sicily fresh fish is genuinely fresh – the island is surrounded by three seas. Pesce spada (swordfish) is pan-fried in olive oil, grilled, marinated or prepared alla ghiotta with tomatoes, olives and capers. Tonno (tuna) is a seasonal delicacy of spring and summer.
Seafood (frutti di mare) is at its best in the harbour restaurants of Catania, Syracuse and Trapani. Simple preparations with olive oil, garlic and lemon beat complicated sauces every time in Sicily.
Pizza in Sicily
Pizza in Sicily is different from Neapolitan and definitely belongs among the dishes to try here. It’s thicker, fluffier, with more dough and local ingredients. Sicilian pizzerias are great and absolutely worth trying – just don’t expect thin Neapolitan dough.
We’d recommend the pistachio pizza (mortadella, burrata, a cream base and pistachios).
Sweets – not to be forgotten
Sicilian sweets are famous all over Italy and they were part of why we went to Sicily in the first place! If we hadn’t tried a single new treat, Zdeňa wouldn’t have forgiven me for a very long time.
Cannoli
A crisp tube (scorza) filled with sweet ricotta (impasto) with cinnamon and candied orange peel. Decorated with candied cherries or chocolate chips.
Cassata Siciliana
The famous Sicilian cake of sweetened ricotta cream with candied fruit, wrapped in green marzipan and icing.
Cornetto – pistachio, chocolate, custard
In Sicily the Italian croissant is elevated to an art. Pistachio filling made from local pistachios is exceptional – it smells different, it tastes different. Fresh in the morning at a bar it’s one of the simplest but best things you’ll eat in Sicily. You can tell the quality by the pistachio cream being thick and still containing pieces of almond that crunch beautifully.
Sfinci di San Giuseppe or maritozzi
Fried leavened buns filled with ricotta and decorated with candied cherries and pistachios. A traditional speciality of St Joseph’s Day (19 March) – but pastry shops have them outside the feast day too. Soft, slightly rich, sweet.
Pasta di Mandorle – almond pastries
Almond paste shaped into all sorts of forms – biscuits, tubes, figures. The base is simple: ground almonds, sugar, lemon zest. The result is fragrant and intense. Typical of the area around Agrigento and Noto. An excellent souvenir – we took some in to our colleagues at work and they were gone in 5 minutes.
Sicilian wines
Sicily is one of Italy’s most interesting and still underrated wine regions. Which is another reason wine has to go on the list of what to try in Sicily.
Nero d’Avola – the best-known Sicilian red.
Etna DOC – wine from the lava soil on Etna’s slopes. Mineral, elegant, increasingly popular among connoisseurs. Both red (Nerello Mascalese) and white (Carricante). One of the fastest-growing Italian wine appellations.
Marsala – fortified wine from the Trapani area. Don’t write it off as a cooking wine – a good Marsala Vergine or Superiore is an excellent dessert wine. When we toured a winery, our guide told us that you’ll never buy real Marsala in a supermarket, only directly in specialist shops.
Where to taste: the vineyards on Etna’s slopes offer tastings with a view of the volcano – an excellent pairing with a climb up Etna. Around Marsala the historic cellars are open to visitors. Florio Cantine wine tour.
How to spot a good restaurant
A good restaurant in Sicily has a few reliable signs. The menu is handwritten or on a board and changes with the season and the deliveries. At twelve noon it’s full of locals. Pasta costs 8-13 €. The staff will recommend what’s fresh today – and they know.
In early spring in San Vito, for instance, I asked for perhaps the first time whether they served fresh fish or frozen. The waiter answered completely honestly, without hesitating, that it was fresh only. You don’t want to eat frozen food right at the source.
Reliable tourist traps are just as easy to spot (or at least places with lower quality). A menu in eight languages displayed at the door. Photos of the dishes in the menu. A waiter actively inviting you in from the street. A position exactly on the main tourist square. That doesn’t always mean bad food, but it tends to be pricier and less authentic.
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What is coperto
Coperto is a charge for service and setting that Italian restaurants add to the bill automatically – per person. Typically 1.50-3 € per head, more in busy tourist spots.
It isn’t a tip (tipping isn’t separately expected in Italy) and it isn’t a service charge. It’s an established, legal practice. Coperto should be stated in the menu – if you can’t find it and it appears on your bill, you have every right to ask. How to avoid coperto: order your food at the counter (bar, stall) or take it away. Or check the menu for the coperto in advance. Coperto is also often added to pizza, which is frequently 5-10 € cheaper than a regular dish.
Enjoy every dish you try in Sicily – it’s simply an experience!
