Nestled in the baroque hilltop town of Ragusa sits Duomo Ristorante, which I think is the one fine dining stop to make in all Sicily. Chef-owner Ciccio Sultano and his wife Gabriella are gracious hosts and passionate about sharing the cuisine of the area from which they both hail from. The Michelin two-starred restaurant is said arguably to be the best in Sicily and definitely worth a visit. As you would expect, the dishes are built on Sicilian specialties utilising well known ingredients such as the red prawn and the Nebrodi black pig, but also employ inputs such as locally made Ragusano cheese. As one of the last few meals on our trip, it was a great way to cap off two weeks exploring the island.
The restaurant is located behind Ragusa’s main cathedral, the Duomo San Giorgio, and I guess that’s where it got its name. While Ragusa is a hilltop town, it’s quite manageable to walk around given its relatively small size compared to Tuscany’s bigger hilltop towns. We parked our cars in one of the main designated carparks beneath the town and walked up the flight of stairs. It’s not too bad. The town itself is worth visiting given the intricate baroque architecture and particularly interesting if you are a fan of the Italian detective books / TV series Montalbano.
As there were ten of us, we were allocated a table in a private room. This was perfect as we were celebrating an anniversary as well as a birthday and I am sure they wouldn’t want us to disturb the other diners. The restaurant is elegant and very comfortable. I encouraged the men in our group to put on trousers – we were here for lunch so there was some grumbling about having to change from holiday shorts attire – but I did have one rebel who stuck to his shorts (and it was blue plaid with red socks). However, Chef Ciccio and his team were very gracious although us guests probably took the elegance of the venue down by more than a notch. On the whole, beyond the food, it was the warmth of Chef Ciccio and Gabriella who made our experience memorably positive. Having been to a number of starred restaurants, the team at Duomo were very impressive in their subtle awareness of the needs of the various guests.
The restaurant serves two set menus and also has a la carte choices. We decided to go with the “Basileus Hyblon” tasting menu, also known as “Between Sea and Land”. And exactly as it sounds, our meal consisted of both seafood and meat. This is a nine course meal but the the first course consisted of five small bites. There is another set menu, “Vente e Passione” or “Wind and Passion”, which is EUR15 cheaper but as Duomo doesn’t publish their set menus, I don’t know what it consists of. They say to prefer to keep things a surprise. I was a bit concerned about timing so they had indicated that the whole meal would take about one and a half hours. I was surprised by this and didn’t quite believe them as most of these meals end up being three hour events. We ended up with around a two and a half hour lunch but I think around 30 minutes was because of our own dawdling (photos, bathroom, wine decisions, more photos). We had read reviews that payment was slow, as can be the case in a number of Italian restaurants, but we didn’t find this to be the case at all.
The Meal – Basileus Hyblon
The meal starts with five small bites. My favourite here was Duomo’s play on the cannolino (featured photo above), which is normally a sweet ricotta filled dessert, but as a starter was savoury with a touch of caviar and a raw Sicilian prawn. Sicilian red prawns are amazing – sweet. Other starters consisted of a Tonda Iblea olive stuffed with pistachio marzipan. The olive, as named, comes from the Tonda Iblea family olive grove, a prized olive oil maker, in the Ragusa area. There was foie gras with smoked mackerel, a tartlet with a raw scampi and a prickly pear sauce and a cherry tomato.
The starters were followed by a soup. While we’ve seen mushroom soup frothed like cappuccino, the twist here is that there was an oyster sitting in the soup that is just cooked lightly by the heat of the soup itself. This was accompanied by a raw scampi in a prickly pear sauce (served sitting on the teaspoon).
The gnocchi with a mix of seafood served in a carbonara sauce is Chef Ciccio’s homage to ancient Gela and Rome. Gela is where the ancient Greeks first established their foothold in Sicily and which was subsequently taken over by the Romans. But no doubt, this is dish is more Sicilian than roman with its cuttlefish ribbons, clam and mussel and local cheese.
Following the gnocchi were two different fishes. First, a grouper is cooked “all’acqua pazza” (poached) in a traditional recipe. Then, a moonfish is served in consommé with a wafer made of fish roe. This was the first time I’ve had moonfish. It’s a firm fish, but it doesn’t have a strong taste. It’s called St Peter Fish on the menu but it’s not a tilapia in this case.
Chef Ciccio has elaborated a traditional Sicilian pasta with his take on what is normally spaghetti with a morescu taratata sauce. The sauce is so named because it uses cinnamon and dates back to 1091 when Sicily was under threat of battle from invading Saracens, so that the fishermen couldn’t go out to sea. As a result tuna bottarga and cinnamon was used to dress the pasta as fresh fish was not available. The word “taratata” has no meaning but is meant to resemble the sound of a sword fight. In our meal, the spaghettoni, a thicker version of spaghetti, was in a carrot based sauce in addition to the morescu sauce. This was probably my favourite dish of the meal, if you don’t count the truffle ice cream below. The Sicilian truffle ice cream was excellent consisting of ice cream between two thin bread crisps and a truffle. It’s got a nice mix of sweet and savoury while the truffle was not overpowering. It was an interesting palate cleanser or bridge to our final course, a meat dish.
I think Sicily’s black pigs are the best pork I’ve ever had. It’s just as well that they only produce around 10,000 pigs a year and are seldom seen outside the island. These pigs are semi-wild, getting to roam the Nebrodi mountains and feed on chestnuts that grow in the forest. The limited production keeps the risk of extinction low and I’m sure they are good because of the local foliage and diet. At Duomo Ristorante, the pork was served with the house “barbecue” sauce and an artichoke. While I did love the way the pork was cooked, I am not a big fan of bbq sauces and would almost have preferred the meat with a lighter gravy.
And finally dessert.
I was just happy to end my trip with a good cannolo. Basically, I only eat Sicilian desserts in Sicily because of the freshness of the ricotta, lightness of the pastry and the seemingly less cloying sweetness compared to global interpretations. The cannolo came with a sorbet made of Pizzuta almonds and a dash of soup made from San Cono prickly pears. With our coffee, was a perfectly sized mini rum baba.
Overall, I’m happy to have had one fine-dining meal in Sicily and made it to Duomo Ristorante. Booking the restaurant was easy as they have online booking (website link) and correspondence via emails were very efficient.
Post meal walk
The nice thing about a lunch that ends at around 16:00 is that it’s a nice time of day for a scenic walk. And given how stuffed we felt, we welcomed the walk up to the Santa Maria delle Scale church where we had an amazing view of Ragusa. Overall, a very nice day spent in Ragusa.
