It is day three of our road trip through Sicily with the oldies and we are in Ragusa! It has been such a wonderful experience. This is the first time the oldies have been able to visit and we have been island living for over 14 months! When I tell you Covid has a lot to answer for ugh🥺, we are just very happy to have them with us! If you are new here, the ‘oldies’ as we lovingly call them. are Neal’s parents. For Neal’s birthday this year, he wanted to do a road trip with the oldies through Sicily, I mean we are only an hour and half away via the ferry! Plus, we thought it would be fun to give them a mini break within their holiday too ha!
Day one of this 4 day trip was in Favara, a little town in the province of Agrigento, where we spent 6 hours eating and drinking copious (5 litres ) of local wine 😱 You can order the local wine by the litre,
like LITERALLY! Giuseppe was a wonderful host, trusting us tourists with his restaurant whilst he went off to have siesta! Yep, we sat in his restaurant drinking and making memories! Day 2 had us breakfasting in Taormina (epic views) and seeing Mount Etna, this was definitely a highlight for papa G!
We spent the last 2 days of the road trip in Ragusa. Our first time here was last autumn where we had a delicious lunch at Ibanchi, so Neal decided to spend his born day here. When we arrived it was late afternoon and we were hungry! The good folk at Villa Boscarino arranged for us to have lunch at Taberna Dei Cinque Sensi and ouu.. they cooked up a storm! First pff, customer service is 5*! Not only did Alessandro keep the place open even during siesta time, he arranged a tasting menu 🥰, yup! stellar service. The restaurant doubles up as a wine bar too, with wines lining shelves and every where within it!
The chef’s intro was a type of bread with, cheese, tomato type sauce.. it looked like some kind of focaccia 🧐,
all I know it was soft, flavourful and tasted so yummy and had us convinced that the food was going to be delish! Tuna tartare, bread crumbs, tomato, burrata and caviar were the individual elements of the first course. The dish was a burst of colour
and it was good, so good. Mama G loved it and she is not a fish person per se, wonder where Neal gets it from eh 🤔😀. Our second course was a fried pizza with anchovies, local vegetables, olives, mozzarella and semi – dried tomatoes.
The pizza crust was interesting, it was not too thick and even though it was ‘solid’ it flaked when you cut into the pizza. The anchovies gave it a nice saltiness which balanced perfectly with the mozzarella. Pasta with prawn, basil, ricotta and lemon zest set the tone for our third course.
I honestly don’t need to say anything else, other than, this is ITALY home of PASTA! Now the fourth course I really liked, it was croaker fish and the Nigerian me had a huge smile on! This is the second time I have had this (outside of a Nigerian restaurant), first time was in Lisbon, it was good then and equally good now. The fish cooked perfectly,
With aioli, tomato, capers and volcano soot (Mama G’s words, 🙄) It was actually bread crumbs with squid ink lol! The sauce was so flavourful, we ALL mopped our plates with pieces of yummy bread, because why not? Pudding was cannoli and this was proper the fried pastry dough was crisp when you bit into it, with ricotta at the base, nuts, piece of fruit that had a hint of cinnamon to it.. scrumptious!
Ahh Alessandro, you did us solid with this menu! Grazie!
Saluti
Ndidi
Addendum: photo dump of sights which include: man like Alessandro, art from farm cultural park, Giuseppe, and other randoms
