Scott G.
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Me Cumpari Turiddu: Where the Locals Eat (and What That Actually Means)
There are restaurants for tourists, and then there are restaurants where the tourists have not yet arrived — or have arrived, looked at the menu, and promptly left. Me Cumpari Turiddu in Catania falls decisively into the latter category.
This is where the locals go. One knows this not from any sign or advertisement but from the atmosphere itself: that particular vibe of a place that exists for its own community, that has no interest in explaining itself or apologizing for what it is. The wine list confirms this — local reserves, the kind that never make it onto international lists because they’re drunk here, by people who know.
We ordered with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. The menu offered local fare, which is to say: food that comes from this specific place and no other, whether or not the wider world is ready for it. Donkey, for instance. We did not order the donkey. This is not a judgment, merely a confession. Every traveler has their limits, and ours, apparently, do not extend to equines, however traditionally prepared.
What we did eat: salads and vegetables that were divine — this word is not hyperbole but accurate description. Things pulled from Sicilian soil have a different quality than things pulled from elsewhere. The tubular meats (I leave the specific taxonomy to others more versed in Italian charcuterie) were excellent. The local cheeses — creamy, tangy, perfect against the local bread — reminded us that cheese is not a monolith but a conversation between milk, time, and place.
And then: my fresh grilled tuna.
It tasted, if I’m honest, a little off. Not dangerously so — I’m still here to write this — but off. That slight edge that suggests the fish was perhaps not as fresh as advertised, or had been held slightly too long, or had been handled in some way that compromised it. These things happen, even in Sicily, even in restaurants where locals eat.
The Nero d’Avola helped. It always does. A good Sicilian red can wash down a multitude of sins, culinary and otherwise.
At the end we waited for the waiter to bring the check which never came. We watched the locals who when done stood up and paid at the front. As did we.
Would we return? Yes, though perhaps we’d order differently. The pleasure of Me Cumpari Turiddu is not perfection but authenticity — that increasingly rare quality of a place that refuses to be anything other than itself.
This is what we travel for, isn’t it? Not the sanitized, the safe, the guaranteed. But the real, the local, the challenging. The meal that reminds us we are somewhere particular, eating what the people here eat, for better and occasionally for worse.
The Nero d’Avola, I should mention, was superb.
