16/10/2023
In Catania the word “Bar” contains several meanings: pastry shop, cafeteria, ice cream shop, bakery and rotisserie!
It is not an exaggeration to describe it in this way considering that, in various parts of Italy, the bar is only responsible for refreshments with drinks, coffee and breakfast items.
granita_brioche
For some time now, only “ice cream parlors” have taken hold, usually located in seaside tourist locations or simple take-away pizzerias with the classic window decorated with arancini, rustici and pizza by the slice; In any case, the bar always remains the destination for everyone from Catania who, at any time of the day… breakfast, lunch or dinner, takes refuge there to satisfy their hunger or to consume a quick and tasty meal.
I am one of these and it’s funny when I see a lot of people… usually freelancers with their briefcase in hand and with their eyes fixed on the clock, while they bite into their oily onion that drips everywhere, maybe on their dress at the latest, not caring about those around them and those who, looking perplexed, wonder how anyone can eat a pastry filled with fried onion at 10 in the morning.
After this introduction I would like to talk to you about the breakfast of a typical Catanese.
The people of Catania have somewhat strange tastes and habits!
Winter, which represents hibernation, is a bit monotonous: breakfast at the bar near the workplace with a croissant and cappuccino; sometimes he wanders by combining his cup of milk and coffee with a nice cream IRIS or a nice stuffed PANZEROTTO! for him trivial things.. it all depends on whether he wants 400 kc in a single shot or if he wants to fill up with 1200 kc to sprint all day!
What are Irises? simple bombs filled with cream and fried! Panzerotti? I’ll explain later.
iris
If for any reason breakfast is postponed to a time close to lunch time everything changes: the choice falls on an exquisite arancino, a cartocciata or, as mentioned before, a pastry with fried onion.
In summer everything is different: the cappuccino is replaced by a gigantic granita in the flavors of almond and mulberry, almond and coffee, almond and chocolate… and the croissant is replaced by a very famous brioche with tuppo, rigorously warm with a canary yellow internal colour. , immersed and drowned in pieces inside the granita!catania-via-etnea
Nothing strange to see the lawyer eating his granita for lunch on the fly before the hearing… always him, the one who ate the spring onion at 10 in the morning!
But, perhaps they prefer salty? So let’s go to the other side of the bar, where there are the counters with the rotisserie: pizzas, arancini, cartocciate, spring onions, Sicilian, bombe, pathè, chased with tuma and anchovies, etc.
Sitting at the outdoor table in the streets, among these tasty snacks and breakfasts, the people of Catania love to have breakfast with these delicacies, in the meantime reading their local newspaper, badmouthing the new Catania coach…. and noticing that what is he sees at the end of via Etnea it is Etna… sometimes white, sometimes black (like what they are eating: cream or chocolate).
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