The Sights We Miss, Part II

I was heading to Noto, a town in southern Sicily, about an hour from Siracusa (Syracuse).  Noto is well-known for its historic baroque center, gorgeous, and simply wandering around the remarkable architectural area is a delight.

Except I wasn’t heading there.  I was still sitting in the market in Siracusa, wondering what to do.  It was a Saturday morning.  Tomorrow, the inter-city buses don’t run and I can’t get to Noto, because Europe is still hung up on this idea that things close on Sundays.  Even the Vespa rental centers are closed on Sundays; I wasn’t going anywhere tomorrow.  I was leaving Sicily on Monday so if Noto was to be visited, it’s today.  Let’s go to Noto, eh?

The problem was where I was sitting in Siracusa, in the Ortigia market.  It’s also closed on Sundays.  I had been there less than an hour.  If I left now to grab the bus for Noto, I would be leaving the market and this is the last chance to experience it.

I was having a blast there.

 

Anywhere in world, the market is on my list.  I’ll head there even if it’s nothing but dead animals hanging on hooks.  It’s where people have to be local.  Even very built-up markets, such as when I wrote about Vienna’s Naschmarkt, reveal the area’s true food intentions.  And here I was in Italy.

Three things one can count on in life: (1) death, (2) taxes, and (3) everyone likes Italian food.  Wandering through a market is sometimes only a twenty-minute endeavor.  A few months ago I was in a small town in Georgia, the country, going through their market.  Nice, yes yes, but not much to do there.  Siracusa was quite different.

Siracusa’s Ortigia market is on the Via de Benedictis, near the north-east corner of the peninsula (technically it’s an island) where the old city was located, also called Ortigia.  The market starts near the old temple of Apollo, still there and still visible in Siracusa as though the former inhabitants hadn’t left very recently, a common feeling in Italy.  2,000 years ago in these parts doesn’t seem as long ago as it should, especially as their stuff is still there in the center of the town, as if the former residents never quite finished moving out.  For people who live with ruins, the attitude seems to be as though they never got around to cleaning it all up.

 

 

No early riser I, there’s only a bit more than an hour to check out the market before the bus leaves for Noto, my day-trip destination for today.  The market isn’t huge; this can be done.  Swing around the temple, delightful to us visitors, and the stalls start, clothes, hats, belts, a bit boring, but turn a corner and there’s the food, and that’s my weakness.  I don’t even need to be eating, but it helps.

Italian food is wonderfully colorful, and they help it by making composed salads.  Even when it’s various shades of green, such as green olives with herbs, the shades affect me, and that’s almost the first thing I saw.  Next to the olives are crates of pistachios, a specialty of Sicily, along with crates of dried tomatoes, which in the U.S. we always describe as “sun-dried tomatoes”, though I doubt the sun has anything to do with it anymore.

 

Must keep moving, as the clock is ticking.  Over here are strawberries, smaller and seemingly denser than at home, and next comes the fish.  Filleted anchovies, then the tuna, dozens of whole fish.  Tuna are torpedo-shaped and look like they are solid muscle.  Next, spices, in wicker baskets, then more fish.  Octopus, cuttlefish, pawns, everything I love.

The next stand is oysters, and here’s where my day’s plan started to fall apart.  So far, everything is raw ingredients, take-away for local people doing their home shopping, but here one could stop and eat some oysters.  They were geared towards people just wanting a snack.  €2,50 each, a sign said, not cheap, but when you buy the oysters, the wine is free.  €2,50 an oyster is what I would pay in a restaurant back home, but I wouldn’t get any wine.  Damn.

The oyster stand

 

I moved on, a man on a mission and on a schedule, and not long after ran into trouble.  Everything was fine at first, the stalls of eggplant and zucchini didn’t temp so much.  The rice and hazelnuts were fine, as was the dried red peppers.  Then I hit the sandwich-maker.

The Caseificio Borderi is a small store where a family has been making cheese for several generations.  Andrea Borderi, now the family patriarch, stands in the front, outside part of the shop, making sandwiches all day long.  He’s a man born to do this job, a man exactly in the right place, and thus is wonderfully entertaining, as evidenced by the crowds always around his area.  He is also, I posit, the best sandwich maker in the world.

Signore Borderi and his sandwiches are so good they have their own blog post, here.  Thus, I won’t review everything about him except to say you must linger a bit at the market and watch him at work, a living treasure.  The downside is that he’ll make you think about eating one of his sandwiches, but that’s not much of a downside.  Just writing about him now makes me hungry.

 

He is also an appetizer to the shop directly next to him, Fratelli Burgio, which is a deli that serves food as well.  It’s been around since 1978 founded by the dad, Pippo, and now run by his kids.  It’s this place that ruined everything.  Inside the shop, cheese and meats are stacked high, bread is lined up in a case, olives and tomatoes.  So many things there are out, sitting out on counters such as the round lopsided cheese wheels, indicated they’re quite ripe.  Large bowls sit about, such as the black olives with herbs or the chopped dried tomatoes.  Almost everything here looks not just ready to eat, but ready to serve, as if you’re supposed to carry it from there and place it directly in the middle on your dinner table for everyone.

A tiny bar-like area inside is for the beer taps and the coffee machine.  The coolers out front are for the chilled wines, the shelves inside on one wall for the red wines.  A pillar inside holds shelves for bottled produce.  All over the room, the shelves go all the way to the ceiling.  More than once I witnessed someone climb up to the top to retrieve something.

Inside Fratelli Burgio

 

I was in distress.  This one store could feed me for the duration of the trip.  A dozen tables stood in front of the shop for customers eating there, and at least a dozen more across the narrow alley.  Plus, oysters were nearby, and hey, here someone is selling deep-fried dough balls stuffed with ricotta, called sfinci, I think.

Time only for something quick, and it was oysters.  I asked for three, and the young man opened three for me, putting them on a plate with some lemon.  He poured me not one but two small cups of wine, a fizzy white, and I sat at his rickety tables.

Noto, my destination for today, would make some great photos, as the town is made for shooting.  I wasn’t sure what other sights were there, what to see, but photography for me now has become a reason to go someplace.  Everyone loves Noto, its write-ups are always great, and it would be nice to see one more little town before I left Sicily.

 

But the oysters and wine were excellent.  I usually wear myself out when traveling, as I schedule too much and constantly feel the need to keep moving.  That’s part of what makes me travel, as I always want to see the next town or even just the next block, but doing so is draining.  My feet always hurt and I’m tired.

Sitting in a market is one way to let the sights pass you.  There’s drama in everyone’s voices and the people-watching could not be better. The day’s plan started to melt away.

Why was I moving on?  This is a great place right here, right now.  Could Noto be better?  Here, I could amble down to the brilliant sandwich-maker and get something to go, and then sit at a table in the Fratelli Burgio food store and try out their selections.  With those options, why would I want to sit on a bus for an hour to go take photos of some Baroque buildings?

 

Caprese salad

 

The next minute found me at the last free table in front of Fratelli Burgio, ordering a glass of wine, a plate of anchovies, and a caprese salad, paying extra to get real buffalo-milk mozzarella instead of that substitute cow’s milk stuff.  Service here isn’t all that great, and the prices are a bit high for Siracusa, many comments on Tripadvisor and Yelp agree.  But you’re not here to get in and out quickly and cheaply.

The caprese was the best I’ve ever had, as I somehow knew it would be.  I’m not a fan of raw tomatoes at all, unless they are brilliantly fresh, as these were.  The presentation was beyond perfect.  The anchovies were a bit too salty, as they tend to be.  Life is very hard.

The table next to me was full of French tourists, drinking both beer and wine.  They had ordered an assortment of antipasti, and when it came, every head in the area turned to look at it.  I couldn’t list everything it included, in a multitude of small dishes on a wooden board.  In the center were two deconstructed cannoli, their shells stuck into small glasses of ricotta cheese.

I needed a shot of this, and I leaned over and asked in French if I could take a photo.  So now you get to see it:

 

The French people ordered another bottle of wine, and I another glass.  Later, in the early afternoon, I would pass by here again and see the French people still at their table, probably on bottle number four.  For I certainly wasn’t leaving this place.  I settled in, and made plans to get a sandwich next door.

 

Photographers, real ones, schedule their shoots.  They do more advanced legwork than I do and they get up earlier for better light.  Once again, I realized I wasn’t yet at that place.  But again, there’s time for that.  After I finish lunch.

 

 

Read about Andrea Borderi, the signore at the market who is absolutely the best sandwich maker in the world, here.

You can see a YouTube documentary on the restaurant where I had lunch here.  It’s a brilliant place.

And read Part 1 of “The Sights we Miss, or how not to see that famous castle” here.