Restaurants

Many restaurants in Palermo are close to the sea, from which emerges much of the bounty on the trattoria table. Pasta con le sarde (pasta mixed with fresh sardines), spaghetti with clams or mussels, and grilled fish and seafood are the items to order on most menus.

Most of the cuisine is Sicilian, although there's more diversity in Palermo than anywhere else in Sicily. Tunisian and Chinese food are the most popular foreign offerings, although you can also find Spanish, Greek, French, Italian, and even Brazilian fare if you search hard enough. Many local dishes still show the influence of Palermo's long-departed conquerors, the Arabs.

If you're a street-food fanatic, Palermo is your kind of town. As you walk along any section of the city, you'll encounter peddlers touting the local specialties -- such delights as panelle (fritters made with chickpea flour) and calzoni (deep-fried meat- or cheese-filled pockets of dough).

If you're with Mrs. Petrillo from The Golden Girls, and you want something authentically Sicilian, head for a food stall with a large cast-iron pot turning out fresh buns stuffed with thin strips of calf's spleen and ricotta cheese. The hot sauce that goes with it will have your tongue begging for mercy.

Desserts are also sold on the street. Some of the best concoctions are holdovers from the days of Arab occupation, including sweetened ricotta with cinnamon, pistachios, candied fruit, and cloves.

Budget eateries crowd the Stazione Centrale, but we generally avoid these tourist traps. Some of the best restaurants are hidden in the medieval Kalsa sector, to which you may want to take a taxi at night to avoid walking along streets where muggings occur.

Since Palermitans tend to be late diners (though not as late as the Spanish), most restaurants don't open until 8pm.

Breakfast & Pastries -- If your hotel doesn't serve breakfast (most do), or even if it does but the menu is a la carte, you might want to begin your experience in Palermo by going to almost any bar or pasticceria for morning coffee and pastries. Our favorites are Bar Alba and Caffè Mazzara.

In the Medaglie d'Oro area, a great cake shop/bar is La Dolceria Pasticceria Coga, Via Gustavo Roccella 56 (tel. 091-596944). One of the city's oldest and most famous cake shops, Antico Caffè Spinnato, Via Principe di Belmonte 115 (tel. 091-583231), in the Politeama area, turns out brioches, meringues, and croissants until midnight.

Pizza Parlors -- The people of Palermo eat almost as much pizza as the Neapolitans. You should definitely sample the local pie, pizza Palermitana, made with bread crumbs, anchovies, pine nuts, olive oil, and cheese (and sometimes sausage, capers, olives, and grilled eggplant). Antica Focacceria San Francesco has been turning out pies fresh from the oven since 1834. A word to the frugal: A pizzeria is your cheapest option for a sit-down meal in Palermo; as such, they're packed on weekends, mostly with an under-25 crowd.

Juice Bars -- Not as plentiful as they once were, juice bars or kiosks used to line many of the city streets. They were -- and some still are -- an obligatory place to stop for a fruit ice. On a hot August day in Palermo, no one (in our view) has ever improved on lemon ice. For a change of pace, try a refreshing glass of sparkling water flavored with aniseed.

Gelaterie -- These ice-cream shops are found all over Palermo, especially in the northern reaches of the city. Our favorite remains pistachio, although the flavors are more varied than the rainbow. Some gelato lovers even order ice cream for breakfast. The concoction is called brioche con gelato, or ice cream in a bun.

A1 Gelato 2, Via de Gasperi 215 (tel. 091-528299), in the Libertà neighborhood, serves Palermo's best ice cream. It also has the largest array of flavors of any gelateria. If you're a true ice-cream devotee and feel you've had your favorite food in all known flavors, scan the list of selections here: You're in for a surprise or two.

Street Eats: What, You Haven't Tasted Babbaluci?

Around the heart of La Kalsa, at Piazza della Kalsa, you can do as the locals do and indulge in a savory treat. Several vendors can be seen cooking and peddling babbaluci, a gourmet delicacy to the people of the district. These baby snails are marinated in virgin olive oil, chopped fresh parsley, and garlic; sprinkled with red pepper; and sold to passersby in paper containers called cornets.

A Medieval Delicacy Lives On

In the Middle Ages, every convent in Palermo specialized in creating a different kind of confectionery. Many of those old recipes are gone forever, but one of the most enduring is still sold at pasticceria all over the city: frutta martorana, named after the old Benedictine convent of La Martorana. Originally this marzipan was molded into various fruit and vegetable shapes. Today, these almond-paste sweetmeats resemble anything from cats to sailboats. The frutta martorana are most abundant in the bakeries before the feast day of All Saints, in early November.