There are two main draws to the hilltop town of Ragusa Ibla in Sicily’s Unesco-certified Val di Noto: exceptional Baroque architecture, and chef Ciccio Sultano’s two-Michelin star restaurant, Duomo.
I’m one day into a two-day trip spending time with the chef and his team, who have welcomed me with the most generous Sicilian hospitality (and portion sizes), as I eat and drink my way through Sultano’s Ragusa mini-empire, which as well as Duomo, includes bakery-cum-trattoria I Banchi, and laboratory-cum-cocktail bar Cantieri Sultano.
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Sultano named Duomo after the southeastern city’s towering Duomo di San Giorgio (dome of St George), which sits atop its 18th-century cathedral near the restaurant. Helming one of only three two-Michelin star restaurants in Sicily, Sultano is held in high regard. Not just for his cutting-edge Sicilian dishes, but for his unwavering dedication to local producers and hard-earned knowledge of the land and its plentiful offerings.
“Sicily was my teacher,” the chef tells me in Cantieri Sultano, a few doors down from Duomo before I head for dinner. He explains how Sicily’s history and the various cultures that have come and gone can all be found in its recipes. “For me, the Arabs and the Normans were most important,” he says, as I sip a mocktail that has been treated with the same precision as one of his dishes. Meanwhile, chocolate smoke fills the air as a grappa and vermouth creation is prepared like a chemistry experiment nearby.
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For Sultano, who has had no formal training, his culinary education began at the age of 11 behind the wheel of a tractor at a farm harvesting tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant to help support his family. Ever since, he has been intrinsically connected to his beloved Sicilian terra. Today, the chef’s unique understanding of ingredients, combined with his distinctly imaginative ability to see what others don’t, makes Ragusa Ibla well worth a visit.
Chef
Sultano left the farm behind for a role at a pastry shop at the age of 13, with his position evolving into a full seven-year apprenticeship before taking the role of chef at a spaghetteria. His use of Sicily’s natural larder was a hit with the locals, but his dedication to using only the best quality produce wasn’t so popular with the owners and their profit margins. This sparked Sultano’s ambition to one day open his own restaurant. His dream came to fruition in 2000 with the opening of Duomo, which earned its first Michelin star in 2004, with a second following two years later.
Twenty-four years of success doesn’t come from sitting on your laurels. “[Sultano’s] mind is always working and innovating,” the newest member of the chef’s kitchen team Riccardo Canella tells me. He himself is a prime example of this. Canella, 38, who was executive chef at Belmond’s famed Hotel Cipriani was brought into the fold by Sultano in February to further the creative development of Duomo’s menus. “I fell in love with this region because of its rich bounty,” says Canella, who hails from Italy’s northeastern Veneto region.
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Neither Sultano nor Canella need to travel far from Duomo’s kitchen to source the best local produce, with this corner of Sicily being quite literally the land of milk and honey (famed for its cheeses and highly-prized honey from the Hyblaean Mountains, not to mention almonds from nearby Noto and chocolate from Modica).
Earlier in the day, I visited Sultano’s organic ricotta and Cosacavaddu cheese supplier, the Criscione family. At their 120-year-old farmhouse they still use the same traditional production methods. Located on the Mediterranean coast, the 40-strong dairy herd breathes in the salty Sicilian sea air every day, and the ricotta is so fresh it is still warm when delivered to Duomo. Sultano purchases most of his produce from small local farms like this one, as well as social enterprises like Proxima, which supports the victims of human trafficking.
Menu
Diners can opt to choose three or four dishes, or go all in with the eight-course tasting menu, with optional wine pairings (around 60% of the labels in Duomo’s wine cellar are Sicilian).
The eight-course tasting menu starts with A Welcome from the Kitchen – an intricate mini feast of minute detail, which includes a singular plump Nocellara olive stuffed with fried Cosaruciaru bean from Scicli and wrapped in pistachio marzipan and fried sage.
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Next, Prima-vera pays tribute to Sultano’s ricotta producer whom I met earlier. Creamy ricotta is immersed in a vibrant green bean ‘chlorophyll sauce’ – an homage to the pasture in which the cows graze. It features caviar as well as white prawn and seaweed salt reminiscent of the sea air.
Sultano also puts his own spin on traditional dishes like the mozzarella and tomato Caprese salad. The Duomo version features a beef heart tomato on a bed of local raspberry tartar with a tomato marinade, finished with a grating of dry-aged tuna heart (Sicily’s warmer waters are renowned for tuna). The dish is finished with an enormous, juicy langoustine (in substitution for the mozzarella) which is seasoned with the chef’s take on a Ras el Hanout spice mix, a nod to Arab cuisine, which has greatly influenced Sicily’s.
Pasta is also on the menu and is made in-house. Firstly, in the form of dainty chickpea buttons stuffed with almond and rose oil in a comforting vegetable broth. Then, in Sultano’s busiate – listed as one of the New York’s Times ‘25 Essential Pasta Dishes to Eat in Italy’. Tight ringlets of busiate pasta are cooked in a mackerel reduction, covered in aromatic fennel and saffron sauce, Palermo-style breadcrumbs, and topped with marinated anchovies with tangerine zest.
Sultano’s dishes all have an element of what he calls “zestiness” – not necessarily in reference to citrus, but in flavors that wake up your taste buds. This is no more apparent than in the chef’s take on pasta ricci di mare, a sea urchin dish popular in Italy’s southern coastal regions. Sultano’s features homemade spaghetti with sea urchin cream and hazelnut in a bitter mustard leaf sauce, topped with sea urchin roe, tangerine oil and lemon powder.
Lamb of Giuseppe G is a dish named after Sultano’s friend and supplier. The buttery-soft cut is served on the bone medium-rare with a sauce of oregano, lemon and marjoram, alongside a petite pepper stuffed with beans.
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Dessert is light, with two dishes using chef-foraged ingredients arriving from the kitchen in succession: I Feel Citric is a zingy lemon sorbet with artemisia (the herb used to flavor absinthe) made into an oil, followed by Aleppo pine transformed into an ice cream.
Interiors
Duomo is on a pretty cobbled street, housed within a Baroque building that has served many lives since it started out as a stable – not that you could tell this now. Today, four cozy but elegant dining rooms lit by sleek custom lamps are interlinked.
Like the culinary creations which Sultano’s close-knit team ushers from the kitchen, great attention is paid to the beautiful crockery, cutlery and stemware. Sultano’s unwavering dedication to quality is everywhere.
Dish of the night:
It comes as no surprise that the busiate is a must eat.
What to drink:
Order the Blue Sunshine, created by Sultano’s talented bar manager, Mattia Cilia. It features Venturo Aperitivo, watermelon cordial, frangipani, juniper, and champagne, served with a salt rim.
Best seat in the house:
The chef’s favorite table is number one, a round table, right next to the kitchen.
Duomo, Via Capitano Bocchieri, 31, 97100 Ragusa, Sicily cicciosultano.it
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