Giovanni Guarneri welcomes us, seated at the cash register/office of the Don Camillo restaurant, located in Syracuse at Via Maestranza 96, one of the most secluded and elegant corners of Ortigia. The barely perceptible expression of Guarnieri senior evokes the hint of a smile of a certain Unknown Sailor by Antonello da Messina who, silent for six centuries, doesn't speak but makes himself understood. Similarly, Don Camillo seems to want to tell us something without fully revealing it. For example, that he is not only the namesake of the place, but also the origin of a style and a way of understanding Sicilian cuisine. Don Camillo, the most titled restaurant in Syracuse and among the most famous in Sicily, crowned with a radiant special mention in the IlGolosario Ristoranti guide, boasts a select international clientele, often linked to cultural and artistic events that are plentiful in the city throughout the year. It would be easier to list the VIPs who have not dined or lunched there.
A Fortunate Choice
We left Giovanni Guarnieri as he welcomed us. He recounted, with frank and contented words, his fortunate choice that led him forty years ago to abandon his architecture studies and to convince his parents to believe in a small restaurant where his parents, himself, and a waiter worked. A risky choice that has proven prophetic, as well as successful. Prophetic because, with the clear direction of relying on traditional local cuisine with products from the surrounding countryside and the Syracuse sea, without neglecting innovation, it anticipated a trend towards which many restaurateurs, with not always happy results, are now heading. A truly successful, and somewhat bold, choice in that part of the city assailed by thousands of hungry visitors and cruise passengers who, after hours of excursions among monuments and churches, are looking to gulp down food at the lowest possible price, in dozens and dozens of tourist restaurants. In these places, more than quality, origin, and food safety, cost, quantity, and speed of service often prevail.
An Authentic Sicilian Ambiance
We have spoken of the prophetic choice. First of all, upon entering the restaurant, what captures attention are the characteristic furnishings of a bourgeois house of eastern Sicily between the 19th and 20th centuries, with dark wood sideboards and inlaid glass cabinets, wrought iron lamps, comfortable and simple chairs, and the airiness and brightness of the spaces, even though the ancient walls are made of exposed stone. They resemble the environments described by Vitaliano Brancati, Ercole Patti, Rosso di San Secondo, and Elio Vittorini, characteristic of this part of Sicily and which they have described in their novels along with the people, characters, and human situations. Entering the restaurant, you can immediately and without doubt say that you are in Sicily without ostentatious traditional symbols. There is just some Caltagirone ceramics, and not even that much; a few elegant watercolors, wrought iron chandeliers, and shelves with bottles of wine everywhere, a sign of a well-stocked wine cellar. It's like a signal that you can't arrive at Don Camillo by chance and do whatever you want as in any trattoria or fast food, where you eat what's ready at any time. The kitchen is active at specific times because each dish is prepared expressly by professionals and not by improvisers. The menu at Don Camillo is rich and there is something for all tastes and to satisfy all emotions. The wine list is also among the most illustrious for the labels present that can be found. And we are not just talking about Tuscan, Sicilian, Piedmontese, and Venetian labels, but also rarer and more prized French ones.
A Culinary History
Thirty-four years ago, the adventure of "Don Camillo" began. It was August 14, 1985, when chef Giovanni Guarneri, son of art, opened his restaurant in the heart of Ortigia, the enchanting historic center of Syracuse, and named it after his father "Don Camillo." Today, as then, the strengths are a strongly distinctive cuisine, linked to the territory, and the high quality of the raw materials, in particular the fish, carefully chosen by chef Guarneri. Over the years, the identity of the restaurant has remained the same, the cuisine has not followed fashions and trends, it has evolved following modern techniques and new inspirations but has never been distorted. Perhaps this is the recipe for a success that continues over the years. The cuisine of Don Camillo tells a "Story" and the gastronomic experience cannot ignore trying some of the most famous dishes of chef Giovanni Guarneri, such as the "Spaghetti delle Sirene with Shrimp and Sea Urchins." It was 1986 when the idea was born to use sea urchin, traditionally eaten raw with bread, to season pasta. The supplier of sea urchins is still the same as then and the dish of spaghetti with shrimp and sea urchins remains among the most sought after and appreciated by the restaurant's loyal customers.
The tasting menu opens with an entrée that speaks Sicilian. The Fillet of grouper meets the Syracuse rock sauce, anemone and seafood. A selection of desserts sweetly concludes the tasting menu. Giovanni Guarneri - who is among the founders of "Le Soste di Ulisse," the association created in 2002 that brings together gourmet restaurants, charming hotels, wineries and master pastry chefs - has many merits.
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The Essence of Sicilian Cuisine
«You have to be intelligent to come to Ibla. And I agree that it is a rude discrimination», argued the writer Gesualdo Bufalino (Campiello prize in 1981 and Strega in '88) when no one could have predicted that the baroque villages of the Val di Noto would become the set of Salvo Montalbano, the most beloved television commissioner. The affirmation of the author of Diceria dell'untore can well apply to food. Try to interpret his words, thinking of flavors and aromas instead of squares and balconies. «It takes - he wrote - a certain quality of soul, (…) it requires a passion for architectural machinations, where the fervor of the forms in flight hides until the last the twist of the deceptive perspective». Here, it is the same sensation as when you taste for the first time the cuisine of Sicily "babba", that is, stupid, because originally different from the island "sperta", that is, mafia. As in caponata, you will be able to distinguish the clarity of the flavors of each ingredient even in the opulent mixture of a dish. Or, on the contrary and at the same time, you will discover in the nose and in the mouth a universe of new sensations, just by combining, say, the oregano of the Iblei Mountains or the oil of Chiaramonte Gulfi with a very poor and spontaneous product of the earth.
Ciccio Sultano, the most famous chef here, two Michelin stars at his Duomo restaurant in Ragusa Ibla, explains it well. One of the menus is entitled Dominations (and how many Sicily has had!). His lesson - with the facts, that is, his dishes - demonstrates that the evolution of civilization is like cuisine: one layer after another, levying and adding, putting and mixing, so as to have at the end a bite in which each ingredient is at the same time itself and other than itself. His historical atlas opens with Polyphemus and the Agnello aggrassato with sweet filling and yogurt sauce with saffron (which is also produced here) to close with the Timballo del Gattopardo. In the modern history of Sicilian cuisine, Giovanni Guarneri certainly deserves a place, who has just celebrated the thirty-five years of his Don Camillo in Ortigia, the heart of Syracuse. No one before him had created a gourmet restaurant in the area, managing to always remain at high levels. For enthusiasts who come this autumn, the menu with the dishes that made him famous is a real treat, from the Shrimp that his father Camillo cooked in 1969 to the very original (in 1999 as now) Tuna steak with pepper marmalade and reduction of Nero d'Avola vinegar, passing through the Crustacean soup with angel hair.
Flavors of the Sea and Land
Sea in the foreground, because we are on the Ionian Sea, not far - about thirty kilometers - from Marzamemi, one of the most beautiful squares in Italy. Which to tell the truth was not born as a square but as a work area of the tuna fishery founded by the Arabs in the year 1000. So much so that the name of the town means Rada delle tortore, Marsà al hamen. We are in the southernmost part of Europe: Tunis - if you look at the map - is further north. In Portopalo di Capo Passero - where the Strait of Sicily begins - there really is the extreme limit, before the hic sunt leones. The fishing fleet comes and goes with plenty of fresh fish, also used by the artisans of the province who put it in cans or glass (from Syracuse the Drago brothers ship tuna bottarga, anchovies and mackerel also to some three-star chefs in the North).
The beauty of this part of Sicily for a tourist is that when the sea is rough or you are tired, just travel a few kilometers to discover very green countryside, so different from the stony and barren ones of central Sicily. Over the centuries, the farmers have piled up the stones and created the geometric maze of dry stone walls to contain the farms of dairy cows with which the traditional Ragusano Dop caciocavallo is made with a marked, slightly spicy flavor. «The true God of the Sicilian - says Simonetta Agnello Hornby, a Sicilian writer who lives in London - is the earth. In these campaigns you do not see the dirt of the city. The farmer collects the pieces of paper brought by the wind. The earth is respected. I find it touching». Touching is the work that Gian Luca Pannocchietti, thirty years old, does in Rosolini, who has baptized «Radice Sicula», his vegetable Noah's Ark in an attempt to recover lost biodiversity. Among the forgotten ancient fruits, he has replanted the Sicilian sumac which in the kitchen becomes an acidulous spice instead of lemon and the sweet and aromatic chirucupara almond that resists frost.
Avola - the homeland of almond cultivation - is less than twenty kilometers away. And in the middle there is Noto where those who love cooking cannot fail to come. They would lose the clarity of the flavors of the place in Marco Baglieri's version at the Crocifisso and the ingenious creations of the pastry chef Corrado Assenza of Caffè Sicilia (currently closed for renovation, it will reopen with the new year). If you meet Corrado, listen to him when he distinguishes the local mennule (almonds) in pizzute, fascionello or romana, each suitable for a purpose, or when he explains how to extract the sweet from vegetables and that «nature itself is neither sweet nor savory». Very sweet, however, are the Gocce di Sicilia di Modica, caramels with carob, the fruit of the mighty tree that dominates the Iblei Mountains. Those who were children here remember with tenderness how many times they pretended to have a sore throat just to taste the balsamic square candies. Now as an adult - confesses the author of this article - he buys the little packets for just over two euros.
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The agriculture of the Iblei area is however anything but linked to the past. Everyone knows about the oil of Chiaramonte, being among the most awarded in the world (Cutrera is, rightly, the best known), but then a few kilometers away there are the sweet white onions of Giarratana (large and flat, they exceed three kilos). And on the coast of Vittoria, the farmers - often gathered in cooperatives under the national Valfrutta umbrella - have launched new varieties: the Cornelio pepper with a digestible skin; the mini Violetta eggplant, extremely versatile in the kitchen; Rossoro, a cluster tomato produced all year round. There is even someone who produces ginger: in Santa Croce Camerina (not far from the house of Commissioner Montalbano in Marinella), under the largest Italian photovoltaic plant there is a vast cultivation of ginger which needs a lot of heat but also shade.
Traditions and Culinary Delights
The most particular of the sweets in the area is the testa di turco of Scicli. The protector of the town is the Madonna delle Milizie, depicted as a graceful Amazon on horseback while blocking the advance of the Saracens on the coast in the year 1000. At her feet fall - cut by the sharp swords of the soldiers of Christ - the heads of the infidels. Well, today the typical dessert is a huge (enough for four) cream or ricotta-filled profiterole in the shape of a Turkish turban. Macabre, but very good. The other religious-culinary curiosity of the town concerns the co-protector Saint Guglielmo, who lived in the fourteenth century. It is said that invited by a friend, the unpleasant wife of the latter offered ravioli, but filled with inedible sawdust and bran. Guglielmo, a holy man not yet a saint, transformed the filling into very fresh ricotta. He replicated the miracle several times and - if you go to the Mother Church in the square - look on the left at the bottom at the painting dedicated to him: there is a plate of steaming ravioli. Also from these columns we humbly propose that Guglielmo be named the patron saint of ravioli.
Stars of Sicilian Cuisine
For being a very small area, the Ragusa area has a high rate of starred chefs. In addition to Sultano, in Ragusa there are Vincenzo Candiano who works in a stupendous recess in Ibla recovered by the architect Salvatore Mancini (his is the nearby Hermitage of the Giubiliana) and at the La Fenice restaurant Claudio Ruta, super-technical and creative. Then there is Accursio Craparo, defined chef of the two Sicilies, being from Sciacca but working in Modica. He does not have a star, but he is even a star in the theater - the last opera he performed at the Stabile in Catania - the wandering cook Carmelo Chiaramonte who after twelve years stopped to open Caro Melo in the seaside village of Donnalucata. Literature and creativity - a hundred meters further on - also at the Consiglio di Sicilia where Roberta Corradin advises you, a writer with dozens of books already to her credit. And, since we are talking about writers, we cannot fail to mention the Majore restaurant in Chiaramonte Gulfi, loved by Leonardo Sciascia. The writer boasted the pork jelly and stuffed ribs (good today as then) in the legendary Palermo newspaper L'Ora: «Here the pig is celebrated». A story of research, of links, of passion. «We cannot think that for 2,500 years no one has understood anything about cooking and have the presumption of wanting to rewrite the rules completely. There are historical elements that characterize us also culturally. «I want it to be a party, in the name of fun - the chef is keen to point out - not a culinary exhibition. An important birthday. An important milestone. «Dad worked in what was then the city's best-known restaurant. I convinced him to create our own business. It was a particular moment in my life - says the chef - I was about to become a father and I had decided to leave my studies to follow my true vocation and embark on a career, that of cook, which until then I had always considered a hobby, considering the sacrifices and the demanding hours of my father. He was much loved in the city. Customers affectionately called him Don Camillo. «When we started, Don Camillo was a family-run trattoria, with only one employee and thirty seats», says Giovanni, moved. Only four years after opening, the restaurant expands to its current size and in 1997, when chef Giovanni remains alone, he decides to raise the level of the restaurant, structuring the wine list, introducing the cheese list and proposing a type of cuisine that moves further and further away from what was the average offer in the city. «I dreamed of a restaurant that could tell our gastronomic culture through iconic dishes but with a personal style. His cuisine speaks Sicilian and local products such as Syracuse lemons, Syracuse province tomatoes, Avola and Noto almonds, fennel, flours, extra virgin olive oil, are recurring in his recipes. And his dishes and his creativity tell how a great classic can be modern and sometimes avant-garde, if we think that the Scampi Rotolino in Sea Urchin Sauce, which recalls one of the most loved dishes of contemporary ethnic cuisine, sushi, entered the Don Camillo menu in 2004, when the culture of Japanese restaurants was not yet widespread in Sicily. And sea urchins are the protagonists of an iconic dish of the restaurant, present on the menu for 40 years: the Spaghetti delle Sirene. «They were born by chance - he says - one day our supplier brought us an exaggerated quantity of sea urchins, and considering that we had the possibility of receiving a maximum of 30 people and that we would not have had the space in the refrigerator to store all the sea urchins that would inevitably have remained, we thought of using them to season the spaghetti, which we traditionally made with shrimp. Forty years of history that speak of the culinary culture of a city that evolves and that becomes more and more an important destination for an increasingly demanding and prepared tourism. That grows in terms of hospitality, with important structures. «Even the catering, in the city, has inevitably changed - comments Giovanni - it has evolved and has come very close to the national standards of high-level restaurants. What I would like, however, is that more and more local places develop, especially in the historic center, which tell the territory, the tradition, which enhance the products of our sea. From his tone of voice you can perceive the emotion of memories and the determination with which he prepares for ever new and ever more ambitious projects. His work for him is passion, is love, is life. «When you decide to do this job as I have done, you accept that work and life merge. And inevitably, the important people, the family, merge with your work. It was 1985 when Giovanni Guarneri, together with his father, opened the doors of Don Camillo in Ortigia for the first time. Today this “sanctuary” of fish cuisine has become a safe haven for inhabitants and visitors, thanks to the initiative of two generations united in the search for 360 °C fish excellence.
The Story Behind the Flavors
Sometimes we tend to summarize life in a sentence. Sometimes, often, we are wrong. Reducing Giovanni Guarneri's career to "it's genetic" is the biggest mistake I could make in telling you about his restaurant. Because it cannot be the genes, the heredity, the common sequences in the DNA, to justify the skill of this cook, son of a Don -Camillo- also a master of the stoves. It must be something else. Beyond science. Everything begins in 1985 when Giovanni, together with his father, opens the doors of Don Camillo in Via della Maestranza for the first time; a street that, traveled, foreshadows the splendor that fills the eyes once you cross the threshold of the structure. We are in Ortigia, the most historic, surly and baroque epicenter of Sicily. The rooms, renovated and modified in the layout over the years, are transformed into a sanctuary: high, deep, thick, with Catalan vaults, stone walls, dark wood shelves overflowing with fine wines and, few, tables covered with white tablecloths diligently ironed before each service. On the walls, paintings, signs, that recall the beginnings. When Giovanni, in silence, with his head down, followed his father's movements. How to fillet a fish, how to prepare a broth. He observed, assimilated, repeated. Aware that inheriting the genes of the great father Camillo, would not be enough to make him as good as, or more, than him.
Years pass until the moment comes to wear the chef's uniform, to decide and control the dishes to pass. He is ready, he can do it. He sets the kitchen around his father's historical dishes and then begins to add his own. He becomes the best friend of the local fishermen, the first to receive sea urchins, scampi, tuna. Now his expertise in the fish sector is immense. He begins an extraordinary work of research and processing of raw materials. He takes saffron from the Iblei, potatoes and lemons from Syracuse. Even the butter is Sicilian. Eating his cuisine is like living a love story, a blatantly poetic tribute to the largest region of Italy.
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Innovation Rooted in Tradition
But Guarneri is curious and courageous, he looks to the new and adds distant elements to the dishes, such as French oysters, and avant-garde techniques, from smoking to foams, integrating them as if they were Parmesan cheese on Sunday's tagliatelle with ragù. All with a simplicity that you can only allow yourself if you are really capable. A sign and testimony that Don Camillo is there to stay. Daring more and more, creating new traditions, reaching goals and waiting for the arrival in the kitchen of Camilla, the third generation of the Guarneri, now a pastry chef at Heinz Beck at Castello di Fighine. With her, the little shoes will have a completely different flavor. "She prepares an exceptional bread", Giovanni reveals to me, with a proud voice towards a daughter who like him has overcome genetics.
Giovanni welcomes the wayfarers of the night with open arms and makes them sit at the table. Two rooms used for lunch plus a third passage where the cellar is located. At the entrance a large bar counter. But it is useless to dwell on these details because new works will soon arrive that will change the cards on the table, expanding the kitchen and remodeling the services.
A Menu That Tells a Story
What to eat at Don Camillo is a good and right question. The cover of the menu is filled with the face of Camillo seen by Salvatore Fiume, in profile, in a sketch as contemporary as it is ancient. Then you start to browse and, page after page, the four possible tasting paths are told: Miteco, dedicated to the Syracuse academic cook of the third century BC and exclusively of fish; Archestrato, a tribute to the gastronomic poet of Sicily of the fourth century BC focused on proposals of the territory; Artemide which, as can be seen from the name, revolves around creations of meat and La Nostra Storia, a manifesto of the most iconic dishes of the restaurant. And among these I cannot fail to mention one, dated 1986. One year after the opening, the most famous dish of Don Camillo was born: the spaghetti delle Sirene with shrimp and sea urchins. A first course that is not easily forgotten. Clear and aggressive at the same time, a slap that preserves all the flavor of iodine and that Giovanni, in forty years, has always kept alive, updating it. The holder of the keys to good drinking is Enzo Amoruso, a sommelier from Campania who defining prepared is an understatement. Serious in appearance, he lets warmth and experience filter through. Relying on him is the only solution for paradise. Next to it is a team of formal room only in the uniform, which with a smile at three thousand teeth and a not exactly northern accent tells the best of the dishes ordered, making you immerse yourself in an experience of belly, brain and, above all, emotion.
The Dishes: A Symphony of Flavors
A story, a place, a childhood memory, a meeting. Each dish at Don Camillo is unique and inimitable, from the beginning, with two welcomes, served one after the other. Bloody Mary, but in the guise of a sorbet with vodka jelly, and Gelo di “mellone”. The latter is prepared without sugar, coppato in the mold of a small fish and served next to a fillet of anchovy from Sciacca. Covered by a cloche arrives at the table. The glass is raised and smoke comes out. A cloud with hints of juniper that smokes the red prawns just marinated in gin and Maldon salt. A distillate of sea, amplified by the enveloping of the oyster mayonnaise and the crunchiness of the seaweed. Misery and nobility, poverty and luxury together arrive with the next dish: a black fondina that hides a cream of potatoes from Syracuse and a cooked - raw oyster. The undisputed protagonist is the potato, a perfect compendium of the sun and the sea that characterize this land. Another classic is the black scampi roll in sea urchin sauce. Born in 2004, it is an anticipation of sushi where a cuttlefish ink crêpe replaces the nori seaweed. Inside there is steamed scampi, sweet and pulpy, outside the sea urchin, of rare freshness. Only one first course is included in the Miteco tasting, to underline the primary role of fish at the expense of any possible accompaniment. The chosen one to appear, between slices of grouper and red prawns, is the potato gnocchi, always the famous ones from Syracuse, with clams, red prawn tartare and datterino tomato foam. A new dish that plays well on the heat of the clam and the cold of the raw prawn giving a ping pong of sweet and savory tastes.
The comfortable and peaceful tradition of cuttlefish is shaken by the new processing that Giovanni makes in the Cuttlefish al cubo, the first of the second courses of the tasting path. Three facets of the cuttlefish in a balance between liquid and solid to say the least moving: there is the sauce of tentacles and tomato mounted as if it were a mayonnaise on the one hand and, on the other, the white cube of cuttlefish blended and cooked at low temperature. The third element is the black, of cuttlefish, jealously kept inside the cube and revealed at the time of cutting. The fillet of grouper with the scents of Syracuse rock with anemone and seafood is the quintessence of Sicilianity with peaks of marine, vegetable and aromatic intensity. And then there is she, the epic, mythological, ultra - iconic, sliced tuna with pepper jam and reduction of Nero d'Avola vinegar. Because change, in front of her, has no reason to exist. Born in 1999, the dish is a tribute to a classic of Sicilian cuisine, "a tunnina che pipi" and is the emblem of that "evolution of the cuisine of the territory" of which Guarneri is an ambassador. Almond ice cream, oil and salt to cleanse the mouth and we move on to desserts, good and delicious to the point of finishing them without regret.