Street food PAT

Pitone messinese

Fried half-moon pastry filled with escarole, tuma cheese and anchovies

also known as pidone messinese, pidone, pitone

A thin sheet of dough folded into a half-moon and fried, with escarole, tuma cheese, anchovies and black pepper inside: Messina’s street food, to eat hot straight from the rosticceria.

A sheet of unleavened dough, rolled thin, folded and sealed into a half-moon like a calzone. The filling goes in raw: escarole, tuma, the fresh sheep’s cheese, anchovies and black pepper. Then it is fried in oil, which puffs it up and turns it golden; there is a baked version too, and rosticcerie make variants with tomato or mozzarella.

In Sicilian it is «pidùni» or «pitùni», in Italian pidone or pitone: two names for the same thing. It is listed among the traditional agri-food products. The same ingredients, escarole, anchovies and tuma with tomato, top the focaccia messinese, tall and soft, baked in a wood-fired oven: the pitone is its walking version.

It is eaten standing up, hot, in the rosticcerie and fry shops of Messina and the whole province, from the Strait to the Nebrodi mountains, where the local provola cheese often takes the place of tuma.

More flavours of Sicily

Street food PAT

Sfincione soft focaccia with tomato, onion, anchovies and caciocavallo

Tall, soft bread dough, tomato, onion, anchovies, oregano and caciocavallo: sfincione is Palermo's focaccia, cut into squares.

Street food PAT

Arancina fried rice ball stuffed with meat ragù

Saffron rice, ragù with peas and caciocavallo cheese inside a golden crust. Round and feminine in Palermo, pointed and called arancino in Catania: the quarrel is serious.

Street food PAT

Arancino fried rice cone stuffed with ragù, pointed like Etna

Saffron rice, ragù with peas and caciocavallo inside a golden cone-shaped crust: in Catania it is masculine and pointed, and the quarrel with Palermo over the name is serious.

🌿 Local produce IGP

Cappero di Pantelleria the island’s caper buds, picked at dawn and cured in sea salt

Not a fruit but a bud: it is picked before the flower opens, at dawn, and cured under sea salt. On the volcanic island of Pantelleria it has been PGI since 1996.

🌿 Local produce DOP

Pistacchio di Bronte the PDO pistachio of Etna, grown on lava soil between Bronte, Adrano and Biancavilla

Emerald green and known as «green gold»: it grows on the lava slopes of Etna between 400 and 900 metres, is picked by hand every two years and is both PDO and a Slow Food Presidium.

🌿 Local produce DOP

Nocellara del Belice large green olive, buttery flavour, dual-purpose

A large, green olive with firm flesh and a buttery flavour: Nocellara del Belice, sold in America as «Castelvetrano olive», has held DOP status since 1998.