Toni greets me with a nod before slipping his arm beneath the flowery cloth that covers the steaming wicker basket on his street stall. He rummages around before extracting a ribbon of something yellow and squidgy. He chops it into bite-size folds, sprinkles it with pepper, drenches it with lemon juice and proudly hands me the warm parcel.
In Sicily, breakfast is less about cappuccino and more about frittola – leftover scraps from a calf carcass, boiled then fried until crisp. It’s what I’m now clutching in my hands and it is surprisingly delicious, reminiscent of the skin of a roast chicken.
You won’t find this snack elsewhere in Italy. Here in the country’s street food capital, typical eating is not a long, lingering lunch, or a pizza on a sunny terrace. This is a gritty port city, where locals devour a historical mishmash of ingredients while walking the cobbled streets – and in the culinary footsteps of the island’s conquerors, which include Arabs, Spaniards and Normans.
On offer in the crumbling 1,200-year-old alleys near Toni’s stall in Il Capo market are pani câ meusa (bread rolls stuffed with veal spleen and ricotta), arancine (risotto rice balls stuffed with ragù) and oil-drenched hunks of sfincione (tomato pizza).
“The spleen sandwich is for professional foodies,” Marco Romeo, owner of StrEatPalermo tours, tells me, “but the frittola is for the veterans.” Across the street, a line of flat-capped elderly men are waiting their turn at Toni’s basket. Breakfast is served.
• A three-hour Palermo street food tour with StrEat Palermo costs €30pp
