January 3, 2010
In early 2008 I met an American engineer at a moving sale he and his wife were hosting at their posh apartment in Rome. He’d been twiddling his thumbs for two years in Italy, waiting around to start work on the suspension bridge to Sicily. Prodi was in, Berlusconi was out, and Berlusconi’s plans for the bridge had been scrapped. I bought some throw pillows from the engineer and wished him well. I was glad to see him give up and go home.
Well, Berlusconi is in again—with what seems like a vice grip on Italy—and the bridge project is very much back. In fact, there was some shoving around of dirt at the construction site near Reggio Calabria on December 23, sort of a faux inauguration, and I’m sad. They’ll ravage the fragile Straits of Messina—home to the mythic Scylla and Charybdis—with tons of concrete and sludge, pillars tall as the Empire State Building, and the greed of developers and mafia bosses.
Sicily should retain her mystique as an island, remain physically and culturally discrete. OK, it’s true that I’m a reactionary here. I want to give the local populace a good shake and say, Stop, amici! Dust off your accordions. Don your native costumes. Bring back the public baths. Make Sicilian the official language. Return to the puppet theater of your vanished world.
But most of my Sicilian friends agree with me about the bridge. Yes, we know it’s a royal pain to wait in those lines for the ferry. Yes, Messina’s a mess to drive through. But doesn’t Italy have more worthy projects? Like finishing the A3 highway between Reggio and Naples? Saving L’Acquila? Improving rail service in Sicily and the rest of southern Italy? Solving the perennial water crisis of inland Sicily? Preserving Sicily’s endangered antiquities? Preventing landslides in Messina?
Is this bridge a monument to ego? Something like the Foro Mussolini or the Vittoriano (“chopped,” as Peter Davy wrote, “with terrible brutality into the…hill”)?
Ach! Spare Sicily, per carità, from mass tourism, environmental brutality, and what D.H. Lawrence called “hateful homogeneous world-oneness.”
What do you think? I’d love to hear from you. Buon anno a tutti.
For more on the subject click here or here.
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December 23, 2009
Happy Holidays, dear Reader. If you’re in southeast Sicily at the moment, the Duomo Restaurant in Ragusa Ibla would be a memorable place for a holiday splurge. It’s formal, festive and fun. Calme, luxe et volupté.
Chef Ciccio Sultano—the only chef on the island with two Michelin stars—is a humble genius.
Il Duomo is just behind Ibla’s curlicued Baroque cathedral and so close to my house I could lob a fat olive from my balcony and hit it. I’ve eaten da Ciccio four times and have always emerged elated, sated.
My sister and I celebrated her birthday there in 2007 with one of the prix-fixe tasting menus. I’ll never forget a plate called Earth, Sky, and Sea—a lemon-sauced antipasto of rare pigeon and plump oysters on a bed of whipped potatoes. Astounding. I felt a little sad about the pigeon and wondered if he was related to the flock of pink-eyed birds that nest in my roof tiles. Chef Himself made an appearance bearing a vibrant tomato sorbet “to cleanse the palate.” Next up: ricotta cheese ravioli in a pasture-green puddle of puréed fava beans. A long parade of goodies ended with carob mousse swimming in ricotta cream and, finally, sorbetto di mandorla, almond sorbet.
In June 2009 I celebrated there with two friends, Rosamund and Roberta. We guzzled a bubbly prosecco so fast that the details of our feast are a bit fuzzy, but who could forget the starter: Sicilian truffle gelato—with black truffles from the Nebrodi Mountains south of Messina—on crostini. I laughed out loud as I picked it up and nibbled it like an ice cream sandwich—crusty-soft and savory-sweet (sounds odd but it was heaven). What kind of a man invents this? Here’s a photo—can you see the gelato peaking out from the crostini and truffle slices?
A few hours into the meal, these gorgeous goat chops stuffed with chickpeas, liver and parsley appeared in front of me:
This was Rosamund’s seafood dish:
My latest meal there, in October, was equally amazing. The grand-finale nearly killed us—a bianco mangiare alla mandorla served together with a sorbetto di pera con mosto.
Chef Sultano is known for his innovate approach to Sicilian cuisine, but the creations are not random. “Sperimentare ma nel solco della tradizione,” he says. Experiment, but within the groove of tradition. His dishes change according to the seasons.
You can find cooking videos (in Italian) on his website, ristoranteduomo.it, including one for pistachio couscous.
Look at this. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was, but don’t you think it’s an abstract/painterly/sculptural masterpiece?
Closed all day Sunday and Mondays at lunch. Tel. ++39 0932 651265
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Jann Huizenga
December 3, 2009
For a year my showers were icy, my radiators cold. The new Renzo Piano stovetop just sat there, shiny and useless. I’d filed a dichiarazine and oodles of other papers, had a friend fake signatures and make phone calls when I wasn’t in town, shelled out €450 in utility fees at the post office, lost hours in grouchy mobs hoping for face time with a bureaucrat. I fawned, flirted, cajoled, and sobbed. After each trauma I self-medicated with chocolate.
Then one fine day in October, Enelgas—like God Almighty—said Let There Be Gas.
The experience soured me on bureaucrats, known here as fannuloni, slackers.
But I could no longer put off a visit to the dreaded water office, l’ufficio idrico. It was time to fess up that I hadn’t paid a centesimo for water since buying the house in 2007, nor even reported a change of ownership.
I take a number, A30, and wait. The slip of paper in my fist bears no relation to what’s flashing on the wall monitor, F6.
“Non funziona,” says a farmer in from the countryside. The crowd swells. We take matters into our own hands and politely number off.
Finally seated at the sportello, I’m shooed away. You must, says the woman, purchase a marca di bollo at the tabacchaio, then proceed to the post office to pay another fee. Which I do. Back at the water office, my bureaucrat pulls out a form from a cracked blue folder and writes the date. “Friday the 13th!” she says. “A lucky day!” (Just goes to show how topsy-turvy things are here.) The clock above her head is running ninety minutes fast.
I hand over my passport, my codice fiscale, and my water meter reading. Clickety-clack goes her keyboard.
“Our computer does not accept your name.”
Perché?
“There is no key for J.” She fusses and gripes and stares at the screen. “And no key for H.”
She calls over the boss. After much ado, he locates the problematic letters. The printer whirrs, spitting papers onto the floor.
The name is spelled wrong; the date of birth incorrect. Corrections are made; the printer whirrs again. More signatures required.
“Are things the same in America as here?” my bureaucrat asks.
“Well, there’s less paperwork there.”
This produces a sudden outburst. “O, siamo maestri della bureaucrazia!” We are the maestros of bureaucracy.
An understatement, seems to me. I slink out of the office across Piazza San Giovanni to Caffè Italia, where I calm myself with a chocolate eclair and hot chocolate thick as pudding.
 
November 20, 2009
A Sicilian couple I know—both with espresso-bean eyes and hair black as night—have a young daughter, Ottavia, with yellow curls and sky-blue eyes. “She just popped out Norman,” says her mom. “We were shocked.”
According to Vincenzo Salerno in Best of Sicily Magazine, medieval Normans—mainly knights and soldiers—came to Sicily between 1061 and 1160. Most married Sicilian women.
A thousand years later their blue-eyed genes still pop out like Cracker Jack surprises in the Sicilian population.
I spotted this signore in a hole-in-the-wall barbershop in Ibla. When his Norman eyes met mine, I half-swooned and half-expected to see a suit of armor hanging from the coat rack behind him.
November 11, 2009
After gorging yesterday on focaccia con funghi and cannoli con crema—typical Sicilian fare—I swore I was going to diet today.
But when I swatted away the plastic bead curtain of my local bakery this morning looking for a small roll, a magnificent mound of deep-fried, sugar-dipped fritelle greeted me.
It’s November 11, San Martin’s Day, the baker patiently explained, and we always eat fritelle on this day. I asked her to put one in my bag.
“With raisins or chocolate?” she asked.
In the name of research, I got both. Here they are precariously perched on the railing of my balcony, against the backdrop of Ragusa Ibla’s San Giorgio cathedral.
I wish you could hear how wildly the bells are clanging in the bright blue air as I bite into these pillow-soft fritelle. They are like glorified warm donut holes, perfumed with fennel.
On November 11, San Martino, new wine is considered ready to drink for the first time. The new wine should be enjoyed, or so said my smiley baker, with typical Ragusan dishes—ricotta-filled ravioli as a first course, pork chops as a second. And fritelle for dessert. But never mind, I made them my main course and washed them down with an old wine.
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