4 Best Restaurants in Sicily, Italy

A light nautical theme permeates this stone-walled restaurant, where the open kitchen provides theater and owner Peppe Giamboi takes the stage as a gustatory storyteller, roaming from table to table. The menu is constantly changing, but you'll find excellent work with vegetables (a rarity in Sicily) and really lovely preparations of local cod. In addition to a sublime rendition of stocco in ghiotto (cod in a Messinese sauce of tomatoes, olives, capers, and celery), it also might show up prepared under tender sheets of lardo in a light orange-lemon sauce with fried leeks. 

This culinary beacon in Sicily's interior features ambitious—and successful—dishes with the creative flair of chef Angelo Treno, whose unforgettable pastas topped with truffles or caviar, for example, offer a decidedly different expression of traditional regional ingredients. The unassuming and elegant dining room is inside an old railway house and is the perfect place to enjoy a bottle from the 500-label wine list; in cold weather, you can cozy up to a fireplace, but the terrace is the place to be in summer.

You might not expect to find a thoroughly contemporary restaurant on the slopes of Mount Etna, but Shalai, in the boutique hotel of the same name, is truly a modern oasis, where young chef Giovanni Santoro prepares updated and beautifully presented versions of Sicilian classics. For the full Michelin-starred experience, choose from the six-course meat or fish tasting menus; to finish, the deconstructed cannoli are a true delight. Wine pairings skew heavily toward Etna producers.

Though this Michelin-starred restaurant is part of the Zash Country Boutique Hotel, it's worth a visit all on its own. Chef Giuseppe Raciti highlights the traditions and flavors of the area with a repertoire of elegant riffs that delight and surprise without overwhelming you with gimmicks. Located in a restored wine palmento, the traditional winemaking structure of Etna, the stone dining room looks over the surrounding citrus orchards whose scent wafts through the open windows. The owners, the Maugeri family, are winemakers, and naturally, you'll find their bottles on the wine list. But they are also wine lovers, and the roughly 70-page tome reflects that.