For Sicilians, and Palermitans in particular, eating is a serious matter: a ritual, a moment of togetherness, an excuse to break from the day and share ideas and company. Palermo has always eaten, and everywhere. What many call street food has existed here for centuries — a tradition that led the VirtualTourist community to rank the city fifth in the world for street food, behind only a few Asian cities and first among European ones.
Strolling through Palermo, it is normal to see people eating something at any hour of the day or night, and to find carts and stalls of Palermitan street food almost everywhere — above all pane e panelle and pane ca' meusa.
Pane e panelle
The bread of choice is the vastedda, a round white-flour loaf, or the mafalda, the typical S-shaped bread with a strip down the middle (often halved into the "mezza mafalda"). Pane e panelle is therefore a vastedda or mafalda filled with chickpea flour that, once cooked like a polenta, cooled and then fried in hot oil, becomes the panella: its aroma and soft texture are a memory to take home.
In the old days, to tell one fryer from another, each mould used to make the panella bore an engraved emblem indicating its origin and freshness: without the emblem, or if the panella was too cold, Palermitans would not have it. To enjoy the sandwich at its best you can ask for potato croquettes seasoned with mint and parsley, or fried aubergine.
Pane ca' meusa and the great classics
Pane ca' meusa is a sandwich filled with offal (beef spleen, lung and windpipe) cooked in lard and served either with caciocavallo cheese or with lemon. What may at first seem bold turns out to be one of the finest sandwiches you can eat. Its origins are very ancient, dating to a time when Palermo had an important Jewish community: in the Jewish quarter of the Guzzetta there was the kosher slaughterhouse and, since their rules forbade being paid in money for butchering, the butchers received spleen, lung and windpipe in exchange, which they began to sell fried — giving rise to one of the city's emblematic dishes.
Stepping into one of the many bars or bakeries, it is easy to enjoy a fragrant arancina — a rice timbale filled with ham, cheese and béchamel (oval) or meat ragù (round) — or the typical rosticceria "pieces" such as the calzone or the ravazzata, a brioche dough filled with ragù and baked. And then the sweet street food: cannoli, fried iris with ricotta, sfince, brioche with ice cream or granita. Every moment is a good one for an indulgent stop.
The location of B&B Gallery Luxury, in the heart of Via Maqueda, is ideal for anyone wishing to savour Palermo's street food: nearby you will find eateries, traditional fry shops and stalls where you can stop and experience Sicilian cuisine.