Catania is the perfect city from which to start the journey to discover the island's typical cuisine. Between art and history, a must stop in the historic center is Piazza Bellini. Heart of Catania's movida, one way to spend a warm summer evening is to enjoy a brioche with ice cream.
The star of Catanese street food is the arancino, breaded and fried, shaped like a cone to recall Mount Etna.
In the heart of piscaria, among Arabian and Mediterranean atmospheres, it is possible to taste good fresh fish such as swordfish, freshly fried and served in traditional straw paper wrappers.
The dish par excellence of Catania's culinary tradition is pasta alla norma so named in honor of Vincenzo Bellini's opera. It is a strong-tasting dish with fresh tomatoes, basil, ricotta salata and fried eggplant.
Passing by via Plebiscito, it is easy to get caught up in the smell of grilled meat that pervades this street of Catania. Wrapped in the haze of embers (?fucularu? in dialect), one can see several local trattorias offering a wide range of butcher's products: the specialty of the house is, of course, horse meat.
Legend has it that, long ago, the inland Siculians, living under the great Etna, were feuding with wealthy Greek settlers who had arrogantly stolen land and women and settled in Catania, making it their homeland.Tired of this abuse of power, the Siculians gathered one night the best cooks in the surrounding area and decided to take back what was theirs. The signature dish of this people, cave paintings tell us, was of course the horse meatball prepared with aged cheese, mixed with wild aromatics and lemon, accompanied by a loaf of rye baked over a fire.
A college of Sicilian sages, during the festivals in honor of Mother Earth, a time when wars were supposed to cease, went to the gates of Greek Catania with in tow an endless line of carts loaded with horse meatballs, pulled by slaves, an inordinate quantity, such that it could feed an entire city.The wise men, spotted by a soldier standing guard on a tower, announced that they were going to surrender and that, for the occasion, they had taken the liberty of paying homage to their enemies with culinary delicacies. This gift was to count, they said, as a pact: they would never bother them again, and the Greeks too.
The tyrant of Catania, with his loyalists in tow, quickly rode up to them on his black horse, as jaunty as his master. He ordered a hoplite to taste, and that one went into ecstasy. The king, intrigued, swallowed a small piece of the meatball with a silver fork, tasted it, accepted the surrender, and thanking the Siculians, declared that he would hold a feast the same evening to honor this peace pact.The Siculians declined the invitation and wished him good things, many good things, many. For the horse meatballs had been mixed with soy soaked in a very powerful oriental poison, which killed in sleep. And indeed, when the feast was over, the Greeks went to sleep in their respective dwellings and died peacefully. The Siculians besieged the city effortlessly, taking back what had been theirs: beautiful Catania.
Concluding the Catania food and wine tour, we recommend one of the most fascinating wine routes in Eastern Sicily: the Etna wine route. There are wineries in the 20 municipalities of the Catania province involved in wine tourism. Between visits to wineries and tasting of wines such as Etna doc, it is possible to taste other local products including Bronte pistachio, widely used in Catania's pastries
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Viaggio nei sapori della barocca Catania
Catania