Catania is the second largest city in Sicily, and it has an international airport. It is a university town, and therefore it has an educated and cosmopolitan population. Although it may appear shabby and a little dismal when you first arrive, it has much to offer. It’s on its way back to its former grandeur, locals will tell you, and the drab look is due in part to the grey stone that was used to build it. Combined with white stone, the grey can be stunning, however.

Right off that square, behind a Baroque fountain, is one of the best food markets in Italy – La Pescheria. The name would mean it is a fish market, but it is so much more. There are butcher’s stalls, and many vegetable and fruit vendors. Some of them still hawk their wares by chanting. My favorite come-on was from a man selling eggplant who wanted all to know that his vegetables were “bigger than my wife’s breasts,” using a vulgar word for “breasts.”

Anchovies at La Pescheria

Catania is not geared to tourists, but it is well-worth a day or two of your time, and it is very close to Taormina, which is beautiful but extremely touristic. That means that Taormina is deluged with people during the season, and its streets are lined with souvenir shops that carry all the same cheesy items you now find in places like it all over the world. The main cultural attraction of Taormina is a Greco-Roman theater. It is large and magnificent.

Instead of springing for an expensive hotel in Taormina, I spent my money by hiring a driver to take me up the coast, stopping in some of the small towns on the way. We walked around Taormina, had a nice lunch with a view (see below), then returned to Catania, where we stayed in a reasonably priced bed and breakfast. (See Italian Travel Links.)

Catania has some wonderful restaurants that are more typical, better, and less expensive than those in Taormina. It is also a lively town at night. If you like your Italy gritty and real, as opposed to polished and geared to making tourists feel they are in a Disney film, then Catania is your town.

Trattoria Don Turiddu
Via Musumeci, 50
Tel. 095-537844
Closed Sundays

Don Turiddu is the kind of scruffy place you might walk by and dismiss as too down and dirty if you saw it empty in the morning. But you’d immediately be drawn into it if you passed it in the evening and saw the lively crowd of cosmopolitan people gathered around the large antipasto array near the entrance. I was taken here by locals – a college professor and an eminent engineer -- who also know what goes on in the unseen rear of the restaurant: There, a large charcoal grill turns out the freshest fish the city has to offer, and there’s a cook at a stove who does a great job with the pasta course, too.

Among the many, mostly vegetable and seafood antipasti on the self-service buffet the revelation will be broccoli affogati, smothered broccoli. It is actually cauliflower, not broccoli, but around here the word broccoli is used for several members of the brassica family. This version was made with red wine, onions, anchovies, and sharp, well-aged caciocavallo Ragusano cheese, which is the most beloved of the many local cheeses.

After antipasti, we had plates of spaghetti with diced swordfish and tomato – an almost ubiquitous dish in Sicily -- and linguine with sepia ink, another local specialty. We always say it is squid ink at home, but it isn’t. The black ink comes from cuttlefish, sepia, not calamari.

After our pastas, we ate the superb grilled fish – a mixed grill – that I was able to watch being cooked because our table was next to the open kitchen. The grill cook, a woman who looked like a small man, doused everything with a blend of lemon juice and oil she kept in a squeegee bottle. She left the fish on the grill so long, I was so afraid she was overcooking the fish. But repeated dousings of lemon and oil kept it moist at the same time the fish got a little flavorful char from the fire.

The bill came to about $30 a person without dessert.

Putia Mazzini
Piazza Mazzini, 8/9
Tel. 095-7233096
Cell: 320-5771-677

Putia Mazzini is in Piazza Mazzini, which is not a true piazza. It’s an intersection of four corners, each with identical buildings set back from the street, enclosing the intersection with gracefully arched loggias that create a covered space at the base of the buildings. The restaurant is on one of these corners, with tables set on the street under the loggia, and it specializes in Catanese dishes.

The local dialect word putia, by the way, comes from the Spanish word bodega, and there are many putia in Catania. Putia Mazzini’s food was so good, and eating there was such a good lesson on the local cuisine, that I ended up eating there twice, which was as many meals as I could fit in without ignoring the rest of the city’s offerings.

They have an antipasto bar, which, among other things, included orange salad with great olive oil and minced spring onion, grilled zucchini with vinegar, mint and garlic; tomato salad with just oil, basil, and shredded ricotta salata; rounds of fried eggplant with a topping of breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley; mashed potato cakes seasoned with parsley, garlic, and grated sheep’s cheese, an eggplant parmigiana with hard-cooked eggs and olives.

It was here that I first tasted pasta con maccu (also spelled macco). Maccu is the southern Italian name for a puree of dried, yellow, shelled fava beans. It’s exactly the same as the puree of fava that is a specialty of Puglia. Here, however, instead of pairing it with boiled chicory, as it is most often in Puglia, it is seasoned with wild fennel (as are so many other dishes in Sicily) and sometimes eaten with pasta. Any macaroni will do, but at Mazzini it is served with broken thick spaghetti. I liked my fava puree well enough, but the bean soup was nothing less than sensational. It was made with borlotti, what we call cranberry beans, in this case dried ones, plus potatoes, carrot, celery, and onion. Simple, simple! Sometimes, I feel, the special flavor a dish has is due to extraordinary olive oil, and this was one of them.

The Catanese have a special love for spring or new onions, cippolini, which are long, like scallions, not global. Wrapping fish or meat around cippolini then grilling it is one typical use, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more succulent than a strip of fat-streaked pork – a boneless version of what we would call “country-style ribs” – grilled on cippolini. A pork patty grilled between lemon leaves was another Catanese dish the grill chef did very well.

There was nothing here that I wouldn’t recommend. And the price is right, although with the tragic dollar it can amount to $40 or so a person, depending on what and how much you eat and how expensive you drink. By me, the house wine is just fine.

Sgroi Bar
Pasticceria-Gelateria-Tavola Calda-Gastronomia-Catering
Via Santa Maddalena, 1
(at the corner of Via G.Clementi and Via A. San Guiliano)
Tel. 095-322331

This is an unprepossessing place – just a counter with sweet and savory pastries, a coffee bar, and a steam table – tavola calda. Indeed, the only reason I stopped here was to go to the bathroom. Then I felt obliged to buy something. It was morning and too early for the hot table to even be set up. But we bought some wonderful pastries for snacking. Great pastries! All our eyebrows lifted and eyes bugged out as we took our first bites. Particularly good – actually the best I ate of many – was the savory pastry called cipollini. The word means “small onions” but the pastry, a totally commonplace pastry in Catania, is like a Danish dough, a yeast dough, filled with cooked ham, mild cheese, a bit of tomato, and, of course, sautéed cipollini. Sgroi also has terrific crespelle di riso, another typical Catanese pastry, very crisp (when they are good), usually irregular batons of fried rice, dipped in honey and dusted with powdered sugar.

Mantegna Pasticceria
Via Etnea, 350
Tel. 095-311918

On the main shopping street, beautiful and elegant, it has the reputation of being the best café and pastry shop in Catania – very popular with locals who gather here in the evening. Also, they have a tavola calda, savory dishes off a hot table. I didn’t eat any, but they looked pretty good. At lunchtime, there were many locals enjoying them. I just checked out the cipollini and crespelle di riso (see above). Both were excellent.

I Dolci della Nonna Vincenza
Piazza San Placido, 7 (Palazzo Biscari)
Tel. 095-7151844
E-mail: dolcinonnavincenza.it
www.dolcinonnavincenza.it
Airport Location, Tel. 095-7234522

On a beautiful old, small piazza named for its church of San Placido, and just behind the Duomo, Nonna Vincenza is famous for its biscotti and other sweets made from almond paste. The almond sweets come in many flavors, the packaging is beautiful, and they and the shop are hard to resist on every count. The old store has glass-doored wooden cabinets holding all of its delicacies and it is a pleasure to browse. They make great gifts, and for the convenience of travelers, there’s a small shop in the airport.

Panificio Samperi Carmelo
Via V. Emanuele 146 (Piazza San Placido)

This is a bread bakery behind the Duomo and across the piazza from I Dolci della Nonna Vincenza. All the breads are wonderful, but take note – and take a piece of – the schiacciata, the local double-crust pizza, classically filled with tuma (young, soft, mild caciocavallo, a form of the local cow’s milk cheese), but also with other savory stuffings that may include tomato, ham, spinach … like that. You can buy it by the wedge or piece, and eat it on foot.