Le Volte

What luck to find a recommendation this good. After several days of mediocre food in Palermo, we were finally directed to Le Volte, a small ristorante/pizzeria in the financial district of Palermo just off of Via Liberta easily accessible  by the number 104 or  101 buses. I'm generally not attracted to pizza restaurants, but the cases of fish and antipasti made a better impression upon me than their association with pizza had.























The first dish I think of when Sicily is mentioned is Caponata, the Sicilian version of Ratatouille. Mostly eggplant, tomato, olive oil and onion, it makes a fine appetizer and works well  as a bruschetta topping or alone as a marinated salad. I thought the plating with fried spaghetti was very modern compared to plating in many Sicilian restaurants, and this simple act made an even better impression that was being formed about the restaurant itself. The caponata was rich with olive oil and had a very silky mouth feel. It included green olives and capers.

The good impressions ended when I tried the classic Palermo pasta of  Buccatini con Broccoli with raisins and pine nuts. When the plate arrived it was covered in breadcrumbs, a topping usually reserved for pastas that include fish. The taste was fishy enough to lead me to believe that anchovy is also part of this recipe. The raisins were very small, round and tasteless, looking more like huckleberries than anything else. I may have found 5 pine nuts in this dish, but after seeing their cost on the markets, I can understand the economy of this particular ingredient. Pine nuts were selling at 4 ounces for 2 euro. I shouldn't have, but I asked the waiter where the broccoli was, since it could not be detected in the plate. It was overcooked and mashed, barely even looking green, in fact it wasn't green. Since Broccoli is an Italian word, I could not even defend this recipe by saying it may have been made with another vegetable. One more disappointment, the buccatini was actually spaghetti, my least favorite pasta.

What we order is what we are served and judging by the plates going to other tables, I would definitely order the fried vegetables if I were to come here again and if I were in Palermo, I would. Especially if other pasta recipes were as good as that of the spinach gnocchi with a Gorgonzola cream sauce and toasted pistachios.

Via Agrigento N 12
90141 Palermo Sicilia
091 625-9999