🇮🇹 Tasting Italy: Palermo, Sicily

Palermo has quickly become one of my favorite cities in Italy! It has an impressive mash up of cultures. You’ll see it on every street, taste it in the food, and hear it from the local dialect.

Palermo is a GREAT city for street food. You can find delicious stuff on every corner, and many of the traditional dishes are street food style!

🍘 arancini: the Sicilian rice balls you’re likely familiar with. In Sicily, they’re much larger than you typically find them at Italian restaurants in the US: they’re baseball-sized. If you want one, you usually order an “arancino.” However in Palermo, they’re called “arancina." Traditional filling is a ragu, meaning tomato sauce and meat. You can also find them with vegetarian fillings, cheeses, and tons of other options! The best ones are the ones that are fried to order, rather than at a cart where they’ve been sitting for hours.

🥪 typical sandwiches: are pane con panelle and pane con la milza both sandwiches. Panelle is a fried chickpea fritter served on bread with a squeeze of lemon. La milza is… cow spleen. Feeling brave??

🥐 breakfast: any bar worth it’s salt will have granita con brioche, a popular breakfast choice. It’s essentially a slushy served with a pastry, and it’s delicious. Like all great Italian foods, the granita is literally just a frozen icy version of whatever flavor you chose. My favorite was coffee and I ordered it all over Sicily!

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