What to eat in Palermo
Palermo eats in the street: chickpea fritters in a bun, sfincione focaccia, rice balls, grilled lamb intestine, and the spleen sandwich. In the kitchens there is pasta with sardines and sweet-sour caponata, plus an Arab-Norman pastry tradition unlike anything else in Italy.
Palermo is the one Italian city where street food is not a recent trend but the load-bearing structure of the cuisine. In the historic markets (Ballarò, Il Capo, La Vucciria) food has been cooked in front of the customer for centuries, at stalls that fry, boil and grill from dawn. For generations, dinner in many households came from exactly there. The street food here is older than the restaurants and frequently better.
Every dish carries a legible layer of history. From the Arabs came sugar, rice, citrus, almonds, raisins and pine nuts, couscous and the sweet-sour principle; from the Normans and Spanish came stuffed meats and elaborate timbales; from the French chefs of the aristocracy came the taste for complicated moulded forms. Pasta con le sarde puts Mediterranean sardines, mountain wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts and saffron into one bowl: Sicily in a single forkful.
Compared with Catania on the other coast, Palermo is more carnivorous, more deep-fried and far more committed to offal: spleen, cartilage, lamb intestines grilled on a street corner. It is also sweeter. Sugar goes into savoury dishes here (into caponata, into the onions on sfincione) and no one finds that strange.
The dishes of Palermo
Pane e panelle
Thin fritters of chickpea flour with parsley and pepper, fried and pushed hot into a sesame-topped bun, usually alongside potato croquettes the locals call cazzilli. Dressed with nothing but lemon and salt. Two or three euros, and the sandwich most Palermitani grew up on. Vegetarian, and one of the few local street foods that is.
Pani ca' meusa
Veal spleen and lung, sliced, boiled and then finished in boiling lard, served in a warm bun. Order it schietto (plain, with lemon) or maritato ('married') with ricotta and grated caciocavallo. It divides visitors sharply. Antica Focacceria San Francesco has been serving it since 1834 if you want to try it in a sit-down setting.
Sfincione
A thick, soft focaccia topped with slow-cooked onion, tomato, anchovy, oregano, caciocavallo cheese and toasted breadcrumbs. No mozzarella, and it is eaten warm rather than hot, sold by the slice from vans whose drivers announce it by shouting. A white version without tomato comes from nearby Bagheria.
Arancine
In Palermo they are feminine and round: saffron rice packed around meat ragù and peas, breaded and deep-fried. The other classic filling is béchamel with ham and cheese. Eaten scalding hot, wrapped in paper. On 13 December, the feast of Santa Lucia, the city traditionally eats no bread or pasta and lives on arancine and panelle instead.
Pasta con le sarde
Bucatini with fresh boned sardines, boiled wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts, onion and saffron, finished with toasted breadcrumbs instead of cheese: Sicilians do not put cheese on fish. Sweet, salty and bitter at once, and the most recognisably Arab dish in the Sicilian repertoire. A version called 'a mare', without the sardines, exists for days when the catch fails.
Sarde a beccafico
Butterflied sardines stuffed with breadcrumbs, raisins, pine nuts and parsley, rolled with the tails sticking up and baked with bay leaves and orange juice. The name refers to a small bird the aristocracy ate roasted; the poor imitated the shape with fish. Served at room temperature as a starter.
Caponata
Fried aubergine with celery, onion, olives, capers, tomato, vinegar and sugar, cooked down into a thick sweet-sour relish. It must rest overnight and be eaten at room temperature, never hot. Older Palermo versions add toasted almonds or even a little cocoa, which sounds wrong and is not.
Stigghiola and frittola
Stigghiola are lamb or kid intestines, cleaned, wound around a spring onion and grilled over charcoal at the roadside, served with salt and lemon. Frittola is more extreme still: veal trimmings and cartilage fried in lard, kept warm under a cloth in a basket and served in a paper cone. Both remain firmly local rather than touristic.
Babbaluci
Small snails cooked with garlic, oil and parsley, served in a deep bowl and sucked straight from the shell. They belong above all to the Festino di Santa Rosalia in mid-July, when stalls sell them by the kilo along the main street. Loud, communal, unmistakably Palermitan.
Fish from the market
Grilled mackerel and sardines, boiled octopus sold by the piece at the counter, sea urchins in season, red prawns eaten raw. Tuna bottarga, the salted, pressed roe from the old tuna traps of Favignana, is grated over pasta or sliced thin with oil and lemon. The market stalls are frequently a better bet than the seafront restaurants.
Local products
The Conca d'Oro, the plain around the city, was for centuries an unbroken citrus grove, and Palermo still runs on lemons, oranges and the late-season Ciaculli mandarins, a Slow Food Presidium. From the mountains come manna (the dried sap of ash trees around Castelbuono in the Madonie, used as a natural sweetener) and sheep's milk cheeses: pecorino siciliano DOP, fresh tuma and primo sale, and the sheep ricotta of Piana degli Albanesi that fills every cannolo and cassata.
The city draws freely on the rest of the island: Bronte pistachios DOP, Pachino tomatoes IGP, capers from Salina and Pantelleria, Trapani sea salt IGP, Nocellara del Belice olives, Val di Mazara olive oil DOP. For wine, expect local whites from Alcamo, plus Grillo and Catarratto, Nero d'Avola in red, and the volcanic reds of Etna, which over the past twenty years have changed how the world reads Sicilian wine.
Sweets and pastries
A cannolo is filled to order, never in advance: the fried shell has to stay brittle, and the sweetened sheep's ricotta goes in while you watch. If you see them pre-filled in a display case, go elsewhere. Half an hour outside the city, Piana degli Albanesi makes them the length of your hand and Palermitani drive out on Sundays for them. Cassata siciliana is the other monument: sponge, ricotta, green marzipan and a lid of candied fruit that in its nineteenth-century form is close to baroque. Frutta martorana, marzipan modelled and painted to look like fruit, began in the Martorana convent and is eaten on 2 November, when in Sicily it is the dead who bring gifts to children.
The calendar continues with sfincia di San Giuseppe on 19 March, a fried choux-like bun buried under ricotta cream and candied peel; buccellato at Christmas, a ring filled with dried figs and almonds; and gelo di mellone in summer, a set watermelon pudding scented with jasmine. Iris fritto, a ricotta-filled brioche that is breaded and fried, is an early twentieth-century Palermo invention. Addresses: Pasticceria Cappello, Costa and Alba for cannoli and cassate; Antico Caffè Spinnato on Via Principe di Belmonte for breakfast (granita with a brioche col tuppo, which is how Sicilians eat in summer).
Where to try them
Ballarò, in the Albergheria district, is the largest and liveliest market, with fry stalls and vegetable sellers working into the afternoon. Il Capo, between Via Sant'Agostino and Porta Carini, is the most photogenic and has the best butchers. La Vucciria has emptied out as a market and become an evening street-food square, more bars than stalls. Borgo Vecchio, near the port, is where people eat late around open grills.
Historic addresses: Antica Focacceria San Francesco, open since 1834 on the square of the same name, for spleen sandwiches and panelle; Nni Franco u Vastiddaru on Corso Vittorio Emanuele; Friggitoria Chiluzzo in the Kalsa; Ke Palle for arancine. For fish, Palermitani head out to Mondello beach or the fishing village of Sferracavallo on Sundays.
By neighbourhood: the Kalsa for newer restaurants and courtyard bars, the Albergheria for markets, Mondello for the sea, Via Principe di Belmonte for cafés. Traditional trattorias in the centre still serve a full lunch for around 20 euros, and Palermo remains one of the cheapest major Italian cities to eat in.
When to go
The Festino di Santa Rosalia, 10 to 15 July, is the biggest event of the year: the city fills with stalls selling snails, sfincione and toasted nuts, and people eat outdoors until dawn. On 19 March, for St Joseph, pastry shops make sfince and some neighbourhoods lay votive tables of food. On 2 November, marzipan fruit and sugar figurines appear everywhere.
December brings buccellato and cassatelle, and on the 13th the city famously avoids bread and pasta in favour of arancine, panelle and cuccìa, a dish of boiled wheat with sweet ricotta. Summer means gelo di mellone, granita for breakfast and very late dinners; July and August heat makes midday eating impractical. In September, an hour and a half west, San Vito Lo Capo's Cous Cous Fest is the largest food festival in western Sicily.
Food tours and classes here
Frequently asked questions
What street food should I try in Palermo?
Pane e panelle (chickpea fritters in a bun), arancine, sfincione focaccia, grilled stigghiola and, if you are brave, pani ca' meusa, the spleen sandwich. Buy them at the Ballarò or Capo markets or at the historic fry shops in the centre; nothing costs more than about five euros.
Is it arancina or arancino?
In Palermo and western Sicily it is arancina, feminine and round. In Catania and the east it is arancino, cone-shaped in imitation of Mount Etna. Italy's language academy has ruled both correct, which settled nothing at all.
Where can I find a proper cannolo?
At a pastry shop that fills the shell in front of you: pre-filled cannoli in a display case have gone soft. Cappello, Costa and Alba are reliable addresses in the city. For the full experience, take the half-hour trip to Piana degli Albanesi, where they are made with local sheep's ricotta and are roughly twice the size.
Is Palermo expensive for food?
No. It is among the cheapest big Italian cities to eat in. Street food runs 2 to 5 euros, a full trattoria lunch around 20 euros, and a seafood dinner in Mondello or Sferracavallo 30 to 40 euros a head. The market stalls are usually better value and better quality than restaurants on the main tourist streets.