5/16/2023 0 Comments Dont quit your daydream tapestry![]() ![]() ![]() Whether it’s the quality of the ingredients or a chef worried that the flavors are too strong for Angeleno palates, I don’t know. Sicily’s most renowned pasta dish is pasta con sarde, but L’Arancino’s version seems muted. But the grilled swordfish is a disappointment: Not only is my slice flavorless, but it’s also almost thin enough to use for involtini, swordfish rolled around a filling of bread crumbs, cheese and crushed almonds. The swordfish that stars in Palermo’s fish market appears here as smoked swordfish carpaccio, a swirl of pale slices marbled with pink and garnished with fennel and oranges. The better choice is baccala all’ Eoliana (Eolian islands style), in which shredded salt cod is mixed with raisins, pine nuts and gold peppers in a sweet and vinegary agrodolce sauce, a sign of the Arabic influence in Sicilian cooking. We don’t get enough of these kinds of wonderfully earthy minestre in L.A.īaccala (salted and dried cod) is a Sicilian staple, and I appreciate that the restaurant offers not one, but two, salt cod dishes. ![]() If you like soup, L’Arancino offers an unusual wild fennel and fava bean soup and brusciuvia, a tweedy melange of grains and beans swirled with limpid gold olive oil. I’m less crazy about the eggplant souffle, a dish borrowed from Drago’s menu. Violet-rimmed slices of steamed octopus are dressed simply in olive oil, lemon and celery to make a light, graceful salad. Another special, snowy scallops wrapped in prosciutto, plays the shellfish’s sweetness against the cured ham’s salty tang. That something so simple can be so spectacularly good demonstrates how dependent Italian cooking is on quality raw materials. One night, a special appetizer of imported fresh sardines, silvery curls in a sauce of olive oil, garlic and olives drenched in lemon, outshine more studied and intricate dishes. So are panelle, chickpea-flour fritters, which can easily become addictive. They’re part of Sicily’s exuberant tradition of street food. While you’re still pondering what to order, a waiter serves complimentary arancini, deep-fried rice balls with a dab of beef rag inside. Fresh flowers grace the small bar, and one of those colorful Sicilian wooden carts sits on the counter in front of the open kitchen. The enchanting island surrounded by turquoise seas is rich in first-rate ingredients, from bottarga (pressed and salted tuna roe), flavorful swordfish and tuna, and sweet lemons and blood oranges to briny olives, green-gold olive oils and capers from the tiny nearby island of Pantelleria.ĭrago, who owns several restaurants, including Drago in Santa Monica, has named his Sicilian venture L’Arancino, or “little orange.” He’s painted the walls of the West Hollywood location yellow and white, upholstered the banquettes in olive green and decorated the dining room with paintings of oranges. Sicilian cuisine is a tapestry of flavors woven from each of the cultures that have conquered the island over the centuries-the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans. In Los Angeles, where northern Italian restaurants predominate, the vibrant food of the south of Italy has received short shrift. So when I heard that Celestino Drago was turning the former Jackson’s into a restaurant celebrating the cooking of his native Sicily, I was ecstatic. Not to mention the delicious fried delicacies sold in the streets around Palermo’s La Vucciria market. I’ve eaten hundreds of meals since, of course, but I still daydream about the food I had in Sicily last year: boiled octopus that cut like butter pasta with tuna, wild fennel, currants and pine nuts the famous fish couscous of Trapani pastries stuffed with bitter and sweet almonds. ![]()
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