Sant Ambrogio - near Cefalu Sicily

Thursday September 15^th 2014 we arrived at the small town Sant Ambrosio.  Sant Ambrosio is a two of 250 people approx 3 miles from Cefalu, one of the towns where the move Cinema Paradiso (one of my favorite films) was filmed.  This is classic Sicilia.  When we first drove through the town it was about 5 PM and all the elders were sitting out either in from of their houses or in the small piazza talking with each other.  They watched us drive through the town as if the Martians had just landed in their small town.  We have rented a small place just on the outskirts of Sant Ambrosio.  We found this place via the website Sicilian Experience.  Carmellina was born in Sant Ambrosio and immigrated with her parents to Austrial and has now returned to Sant Ambrosio to try to help the town by facilitating tourism in the town.

Last night we had dinner at the only restaurant open in Sant Ambrosio, Osteria Bacchus.  I love this kind of place.  No menu.  Just tell me what there is to eat.  I don’t need a 4 page menu.  I’m always suspious of a large menu.  How can that many things be fresh?  Some of it’s got to be from last week and recycled into this weeks special’s. They had about 4 or five things on the menu.  We choose Scampi with Spagetti and a pasta with what we thought was zuccinni flowers.  Sorry but I didn’t get any pictures we were so hungry that we tore into it before I had a chance to photograph it.  It was tortured into tall food towers or presented in contrived format that it was not.  Just plan simple good food.  The scampi was gotten fresh today from the boats in Cefalu.  The scampi had been pick out by the owner and much of it still had the roe attached.  Beautiful red colored eggs to the underside of the scampi.  Molto delizioso!  The other dish that we order that we thought was something with zucchini flowers turn out to be a specialty of the region, not zucchini flowers but the zucchini leaves (I didn’t know you could eat them) served with pasta in a vegitable broth.  It’s called “Ten erudite” It was delicious a soupy kind of pasta that I remember my nona making.  Like pasta with spinach in broth.  The waiter makes his own wine.  A delicious bottle of his own Nero d’Avola.  All the staff was incredibly warm and extending.  They did their best to speak English and we did our best to speak Italian.  Somehow we met in the middle.  The meal was finished with a parfait of Nero d’Avola with a syrup of Nero d’Avola.   Total 38 euro’s!

Breakfast

Drink before Dinner