today we're in Italy and we're on the
island of Sicily and we're here to eat
we can't wait to show you some of the
best local food this island has to offer
Sicilian food is a mishmash of cultures
and some of the most unique in Italy
this is our second video from Palermo
and we're here to hunt down Sicily's 
most famous food watch out for street
food classics, recipes that speak to
Palermo's past and traditional Sicilian
food in this three-part series we'll show
you some of Palermo's best food from
local restaurants that are off the
beaten path to food you'll find nowhere
else you don't want to miss this series
get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're
Chasing a Plate we hope you're hungry
let's eat!
we're in Palermo the capital city of
Sicily and this city has a thriving
street food culture so that's what this
video is going to be all about we're
gonna be zipping all around town to
show you the best local street food eats
Sicilians love their offal and this first
street food is the ultimate example of
nose-to-tail eating it's called pani ca meusa
and it is a chopped spleen and lung
sandwich
this is a real heritage place it's
been around since 1943 and they're super
famous for this sandwich so they've got
two stations making the same sandwich
and they're churning now them out there's lots of
people coming in grabbing one to eat out
on the street so this is a true Sicilian
street food well actually it's a Palermo
street food you'll only find this here
in Palermo
this is a super unique street food I've
never seen a sandwich like this so
you've just got a white bun some sesame
seeds on top and absolutely packed with
veal spleen and veal lungs and the
the spleen and the lungs are cooked just
very simply I think just boiled probably
and then once they've done that they've
done that whole then they get chopped up
into little bits and in the shop there
when you order all of those pieces of
offal are being cooked in lard in pork
lard and so they're just dipping them in
that beautiful glossy lard it's
covering them and so it's a hot sandwich
and then once he's taken them out of
that lard just squirted a little bit of
lemon on there, sprinkle of salt so very
very simple
that is a beautiful flavour
so the first thing
that really stands out is the texture of
that spleen actually it's quite squishy
it's a bit like eating liver it's not
offal-y at all it doesn't have an iron-y
 taste it's got a beautiful taste
from that pork lard
and then the lemon actually really comes
through has a nice kick of lemon juice
whoa
that is really good it's a punch of flavour and
you can really taste the difference
between the lung and the spleen the
spleen has a much more offal-y taste than
the lung I find lung to be quite a clean
tasting, a very mild offal whereas the spleen
is a bit heavier so they balance each
other out really well and the lemon all
over the top works a treat now you
can get this with cheese just a little
bit sprinkled on top but we want to do
it properly just have plain the
traditional way and I can see that cheese
might add a little bit but I think it
would take away actually because the the
taste of the offal is incredible
it's really good and it's quite funny
here this is the store just behind me so
it's a tiny little shop all the locals
are kind of using it like a
drive-through so they're just pulling up
along the curb here they run out of
their cars grab a sandwich jump back
into their car eat it on the run
that is a really good really unique sandwich
I love that Palermo has such a strong
street food culture and what's also
really neat here is it's a very small
place so you can walk everywhere we
approaching our next stop at the friggitoria
which is a fried food stand and
we're here to eat a couple of Paermo's
most classic street foods
we're here to eat panella which are chickpea
fritters and crocchè which are potato
croquettes and they're making them right
there in front of us there's this huge wok
of oil and they're frying them up they look
so golden and crispy
How set am I? So I've got a beer in one
hand and my sandwich in the other so
this is what we've come here to eat we
have got a sandwich or a roll stuffed
full with crocchè which are the potato
croquette so mashed potato there's a bit
of mint in there and they've just been
deep-fried
and then the panella which is hiding
underneath so that's those slices of
chickpea fritters which have got parsley
inside so made with chickpea flour and
also just deep fried alright let's give
this thing a taste
oh that is really good so it's very very
creamy the croquettes, the potato croquettes
are very crunchy so the mashed potato
which has hit that oil has formed this
beautiful golden crispy crunch and the
mashed potato is super smooth the chickpea
fritters are very light so you think
that they might be quite dense but the
flour is very finely milled and then it's
just very crispy on the outside really
soft on the inside
the roll is super soft
panella is really popular in Palermo it's
a Palermo street food and the
chickpeas came to Sicily with the Arabs
in the 10th and 11th century so Sicily has got a
really distinctive cuisine Palermo is
often regarded as the world's most
conquered city so the Greeks the Spaniards
the Normans the Phoenicians of North
Africa the Arabs they've all been
here and they've all left their mark on
the cuisine and that's where the
chickpea comes in, it's really good
beer is the perfect accompaniment to
this sandwich what I love about it is
it's really perfectly seasoned so you
think chickpea fritter, it sounds a
little bit bland but it's not at all
it's got a real savoury salty hit and
that beer is going down very well
in this heat too
our aim with this channel is to always
show you the most traditional the most
local the places that are doing it right
the next stop's for gelato and we got
chatting with some guys at that last stop
some locals from Palermo and they said
that this place is top of the list for
gelato here in Palermo and there's a key
reason for that so this particular shop
right behind me uses natural ingredients
everything is real so real fruit not
powdered milk that sort of thing and
it is quite hard to find here in Italy I
mean you see a gelato shop on every
corner but a lot of them use powders and
packets and they taste very chemically
so you've really got to find the places
that do it right and apparently this
place is doing it super right really
natural so let's get some gelato
holy moly check out my gelato so it's
very common here in Palermo to get your
gelato in a brioche so I got two flavours
I got salted pistachio and also extra
dark chocolate and there is a ton of
gelato in here and it's rapidly
melting so I'm just gonna get a huge
bite of that extra dark
oh my goodness
it is
beautiful the texture of the gelato is very
creamy the chocolate is so intense slightly
bitter and not very sweet let's get into
this salted pistachio now I love
pistachio gelato so that's why I chose
this flavour but also because Sicily
grows pistachios they grow on the
eastern side of the island by Mount Etna
the volcano
oh my goodness it is good it's just
got a hint of salt there's chunks or
actual pistachio nuts in the gelato
so they're really crunchy there's just a
beautiful earthy flavour and like Thomas was
saying
the gelato doesn't have that chemical
aftertaste you can really taste the
quality ohhh this is good let's just get a bite of this brioche
the brioche is quite sturdy the bun is
quite dense but I suppose that's because
if it was too soft it would just sort
of disintegrate and so it's a really
great vessel for the gelato ohhh and
you get so much of it
heaven
we're on the hunt for our next street food it's called sfincione it's sort of Sicily's
pizza I suppose and we're told that
the most authentic version is sold from
the back of a tuk-tuk so it's a mobile
street food so we're literally walking
the streets of Palermo trying to find
these mobile vendors who are selling
sfincione, fingers crossed we find
one
the hunt was a total failure a total bust
so we didn't find any of the roaming
sfincione vendors we wandered the
streets of Palermo for ages but
didn't come across any so next best thing
we jumped on a local bus and we've
come to a bakery that's really famous
for its sfincione
the bakery is so busy locals are
pouring in grabbing their lunch we had
to wait a few minutes for this sfincione 
 it came fresh out of the oven and how
good does it look so I know that before
I referred to it as sort of like a
Sicilian pizza but in reality it's
really nothing like a pizza it's got a
dough and then you've got this topping on top which is really
unique because it soaks itself into
the dough as it's baking so the name
sfincione translates to or comes
from the Latin and Greek words for
sponge so you've got this really spongy
base and then a topping or a sauce which
is made up of tomatoes, there's oregano,
breadcrumbs
anchovies and then also caciocavallo cheese which is like a
stretchy curd cheese but enough talking
this is smelling way too good not to
get in all right I'm gonna get this end
bit here
oh my goodness
that is so so delicious alright so you've
got this base which is light as air it
really is sort of spongy in texture
really light and that toppping is full of
flavour the tomatoes are so juicy and
sweet
it's sensational you get a really strong
hit of oregano from that dried oregano
on the top and the breadcrumbs are a little bit crunchy
there's onions cooked into that sauce as
well so they're very sweet
I cannot get
over how good this sfincione is the
cheese so that's the like brown-y yellowy
stuff on top the cheese the caciocavallo
it is very very subtle but it's
almost crunchy like it's crisped up in
the oven
the tomato flavour is just insane
Palermo's street scene is brilliant
now we're gonna have a very Sicilian
street food it's some intestines grilled
up on a barbecue I can see them just up
here behind the camera and the smell is
unreal so this is going back to kind
of like the start of the video doing the
whole nose to tail thing like we talked
about here in Sicily they love eating
nose to tail
that delicious meat sizzling on the
grill is stigghiola so the lamb
intestines the smell is just sensational we can't wait to get in
we have emerged from the smoke with the
most beautiful looking plate of stigghiola
so these are lambs intestines now
intestines is an offal that I absolutely
love and the reason I love it is because
it crisps up on the outside gets some
beautiful charred bits and these are super
charred from being on the barbecue so
they're just sitting on some really hot
coals but the inside is often really
creamy and stays nice and runny let's
see if that's the case here
there's so much flavour in that hmm
the outside has
that beautiful charredness on it tiny
bit of crunch from that and a little bit
of caramelization and then the inside is
completely creamy really really creamy
and it had just a little bit of salt and
some lemon put on it after it came off
the grill and was cut up so it's very
simply seasoned oh that is delicious
let's get a whole lot more look at all
that nice char on the outside and you
can see that crazy creaminess in there
Ohhhhhh
it bursts in your mouth you bite in and
the outside is that little bit more
solid and the cream just pops out the
side so it sorta just coats your mouth
beautiful flavour it's got a real nice
meaty flavour it really does taste like
lamb but that beautiful texture
difference between the outside and the
inside
we decided that these would probably go
perfectly with a nice cold beer
I think that was a good decision
drinking food
that goes perfectly with the taste of
the super refreshing cold beer I'm loving it
