I Banchi, Ragusa, Italy – sea food on steroids 😮

What do you do when your train has major delays and you end up missing the ferry?  You get an overnight stay in Sicily; rent a car for the day, enjoy driving the Sicilian country roads

with amazing views and have the best darn sea food taster menu yet 🤷‍♂️😀. Driving through the country roads I have to say is therapeutic.. I do love me a road trip since I am usually the passenger🤭, but, there is just something  about the open road, the views, the sky that humbles you. Anyway, we decided to stop for lunch and explore one of the towns we were driving through which happened to be Ragusa and it was well worth with!

I Banchi is both a pastry shop and restaurant that serves scrumptious delights I tell you! We arrived just before lunch service but that didn’t bother us none as we were well happy to take a load off and people watch ha! We gave their taster menu a go, and they did A TINNNNG! Kicked off this food adventure with a glass of bubbly as you do when you are on holiday, plus, we deserve it considering we missed our ferry 🤷‍♂️?

First course was red prawn caviar and cheesy spread.. It was the vividness of the prawn for me?

I mean talk about fresh.. like FRESH okay? The shrimp in reduced emulsion and sparkling wine came served in a spoon?

Ahh the details! I am here for it!  Again, this was fresh like catch-of-day, straight -out-of-the-sea fresh with the sparkling wine? it was joy on the palate people! The seafood pasta with zucchini took me out. I was not expecting it to look the way it did. I mean I assumed it would be, well, zucchini pasta in some kind of sea food selection sauce. I was way off the mark ha! Not only was it not the zucchini pasta I envisioned, it was a creamy seafood pasta

that was accompanied with a prawn almond milk soup😱.

 It was 2 dishes people!

TWO utterly yummy seafood dishes that made me 😋. Octopus, white prawn, squid with focaccia in burrata and pesto type sauce!

Come on now! Doing the most out here and I ain’t mad at all! The spaghetti, egg plant sauce and tuna with bread crumbs? It was a little salty, had undertones of bitterness, yet it gave crunch, bite .. T E X T U R E!

Pear sorbet and fennel

with a sprinkle of sea salt and dash of olive oil altered what would have been just a pear fennel sorbet into an ‘apple’ tasting sorbet! It was the ideal palate cleanser. Having the Veal belly and mashed potatoes in red wine was the treat I didn’t know I needed but very glad I had because it was goodt! plus, can we appreciate the way this dish is plated?

Dessert was a two part affair. We had lemon ginger sorbet and hazel nut clouds which was a whipped like semi fredo, As well as, hazel nut chocolate ice cream, chocolate with nuts.

I had my whole hazel nut life SNATCHED! Like for real..

Phew I Banchi, you are truly special!

Saluti

Ndidi