It's more than a year since I was in Palermo, yet odd reminders still draw me back. The weather was like it is here now – hot and close, threatening to rain. What made me think of it this morning is the fennel growing in our vegetable garden, now so tall that it waves to me through the kitchen window in the breeze. I ate bucatini with wild fennel and fresh sardines at the Antica Focacceria San Francesco, sitting outside in the shaded piazza. There was a breeze there too, this one warm and scented with the smells of cooking.
So hungry I could eat a horse's head (tacky Godfather reference, sorry), I claimed my outside table for one and ordered mixed antipasti and a portion of caponata to start. Most of what arrived I'd expected. There were arancine (deep fried rice balls filled with ragu), panelle (chickpea fritters), sfincione (a kind of pizza) and cazzilli (potato croquettes). But there was a surprise too, which I hadn't ordered. Pani ca' meusa: a small bread roll filled with boiled veal lungs and spleen, topped with slivers of caciocavallo cheese. Yum. Probably not on McDonald's NPD horizon, but evidently extremely popular in Palermo. And any city that offers veal innards in a bun as its signature dish deserves respect.
In for a cent, in for a euro, I bit into the soft bread and the meat inside. And chewed. The taste was oddly sweet, meaty but sweet, like cow's breath, the texture rubbery. I peeled back the top piece of bread to investigate. The innards were layered in thin slices, and pinkish brown. One piece had a delicately frilly and anatomically detailed pale centre. I closed the bun and chewed some more. As I chewed, I noticed a few people emerging from the Focacceria with serviettes wrapped around buns of their own. Then more people. Theirs were not little buns, like mine, but large ones, the size of saucers, stuffed so generously that the filling oozed out from between the bread. The Big Macs, the Whoppers of Palermo fast food.
Soon almost everyone in the piazza was chewing. And talking. They stood, they walked, they sat on the steps of the church, and they chewed. The Palermitans must have the most exercised jaws in Europe. Next day, wandering around the market, I saw the raw materials of the dish hanging from hooks like wet chamois leathers, and realised why all that chewing was necessary.
Talking of jaws, it would have been nice if the waiting staff at the Antica Focacceria had managed to stretch theirs into some semblance of a smile. Whilst the food here was acceptable, the service was the epitome of Sicilian surliness. Perhaps the fawning attention lavished upon the crisply suited and sun-shaded businessmen on the next table had left them drained, bless them.
Antica Focacceria San Francesco, Via Paternostro Alessandro, 64, 90133 Palermo, Sicily
Tel 091 6090261
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