Ciao Sicily — Word of Mouth

I AM IN ITALY!!!

From a wee-young age, I’ve had a fascination with Italy. Growing up, like a lot of kids, my favorite food was pizza and pasta… and I loved soccer. I remember when Roberto Baggio missed the last penalty kick in the 1994 soccer World Cup Final and lost the final against Brazil: my friends and I mourned for days.

When I think of black-and-white films, Italian classic movies are among the first ones I think of: Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thief are at the top of the list.

I love how the Italians communicate with much passion and presence: a lot of hand gestures and dramatic expressions… the rhythm of their language is like a song.

The first time I visited Italy in 2000, I found the local Italians to be extremely affable and gregarious and ever since then, I wanted to go back.

More than fifteen years later, I was finally back.

*Flying in to Catania. The golden lights in the dark make it look like any other city to be honest.*

I flew into Catania, one of the ten biggest cities in Italy and the second largest city in Sicily. I’d never been to the southern-tip of Italy. All I really knew of Sicily was the infamous Sicilian mafia. I also knew Sicily being the most southern part of Europe, is the gateway to Europe for a lot of African migrants. For many, these two factors shy them away from visiting Sicily, especially when you consider how beautiful and amazing the rest of the country is, yet I could feel there was far more to Sicily than my superficial knowledge.

It was way passed the nonnas’ bedtime… as it was mine!

The trip to Catania was rather arduous as I flew out of Lisbon. The flight was delayed for 7hours: we departed at 1am; I landed in Catania airport at around 4am and got ripped off by a cab driver for a bogus airport “surcharge” tax. I didn’t have the energy to argue as I was feeling quite sick and exhausted. My original plan was to stay at Catania only for a night so I had to check-out of my hotel with three hours’ sleep; under normal healthy circumstances, I could deal with this but I had a bad cold in Lisbon so all of this was quite taxing.

Anyway, zombie-like at 5am, I was still excited to be in Italy as I fell into a heavy slumber.

The next day… well, about six hours later, I picked up my rental car (driving in Italy is chaos, driving in Catania is suicidal) and decided to stay in Catania for another night because I was still feeling very crook: my body was heavy, my head clogged up with fuzz: all I want to do curl up in fetal position in a bed.

Every street corner in Italy looks like an alley towards adventure and amazing food.

*Cathedral of Sant'Agata near the fish market.*

In this slightly challenged frame of mind, I had lunch in the middle of the city. I wanted something easy on the stomach and something comforting. Trudging on a cobbled lane street, I saw a trattoria that said “carne (meat), pesce (fish), pizzeria” so I went in.

They didn’t have a menu but I could understand a bit of Italian. How good is my Italian? A few months of Duo Lingo worth… so not really.

The waitress started speaking and I had no idea what she was saying. I felt woozy and I could feel a thick stage curtain shutting in front of me and in fact burying me to only see darkness. At this point, feeling sick, sleep-deprived and not having eaten in over 17hours, my brain was in melt down. I just said “si (yes)” to whatever she said in a small shaky sad voice like a hobbit getting robbed by a Sicilia mafia.

As I sat at the table, I didn’t know what to expect. The only certain thing was that I was exhausted, hungry and the table bread in front of me tasted incredible. I looked around… a few local families with their kids, nobody spoke English.

When the waitress appeared, I observed her carrying a big bowl. In the white bowl was a mountain of small fish in soup.

I thought to myself, that’s a LOT of fish and that’s a lot bones to deal with.

As I stared in to the bowl contemplating my life choices, bemused and breathless, I looked up to the waitress who smiled at me and walked away.

I tried to smile back but my face was probably frozen like an ice-block… you could’ve chipped my frozen cheek off with a spoon.

A bowl of fish… oh boy.

I took a spoon and my lips enacted an unenthusiastic sip. “The broth tastes good. How am I gonna eat the fish?” I just bit in to it.

It was actually really soft; so soft you didn’t feel the thorny bones; slight texture to it but you could just bite into it and eat it with the rest of the flesh.

This is EXACTLY what I needed and wanted. A dish that’s not too heavy on the stomach, light and really tasty. By the end, I was using the bread to absorb every little particle left on the bowl.

“Che cosa? (what is this?),” I ask the waitress.

It’s a phrase I didn’t learn on Duo Lingo but from watching Jamie Oliver’s Great Italian Escape. If you watched the show and had to take a sip of beer every time Jamie said “che cosa”, you’d be tanked in half an hour.

“Frutti di mare,” the waitress replies.

I think about the phrase. “Frutti” means “fruits”, “mare” is “sea”. “Fruits of the sea… seafood”… yup, that was definitely what was giving me the coco jambo good times!

First meal in Italy did not disappoint. In fact, I loved it. Frutti di mare is a dish typical in Catania. In the city, there’s a raucous fish market and seafood is an integral part of the local diet. No wonder it tasted so good and provided me with all the joy and sustenance I needed.

To be honest, I was ready for the first meal to be disappointing. I thought I’d have to seek out the good places; do some research. No need for that. I didn’t even have an operable mobile phone with wifi connectivity at this point.

Fish-breath in tow (and thankfully not “in toe”… wow, that’s intense) I was already fantasising about the next meal.