The team of Le Soste di Ulisse

It was November 2003 when Nino Graziano, the first (and second) Michelin star of the whole of Sicily, won over his reserved personality and founded Le Soste di Ulisse, a roof under which the best chefs in the island would begin to discuss. Less than two years later, he moved his Mulinazzo from Palermo to Moscow – where he now runs as many as 22 Italian cuisine establishments -, leaving the presidency to Enrico Briguglio, patron of Casa Grugno in Taormina.

Over this decade, Le Soste opened their doors to hotels (today there are 20), to wineries (15, from Planeta to Donnafugata) and multiplied the stars of the 31 establishments by seven: as of a few days ago, the stars are in fact 14, divided between 10 restaurants almost all of which are on the Eastern side of the island (as for the western massacre, only Bye Bye Blues in Palermo is saved). What better occasion for a toast?

During the course of the entire weekend, the tinkling of flûtes broke the out-of-season silence at the San Domenico Palace in Taormina, known as the den of the less-advertised 2-starred chef in Italy, namely Massimo Mantarro of Principe Cerami, the excellent director of a dinner during which, in a few square metres, around 70 youngsters from 13 restaurants among the best establishments of the island cooked together: Ciccio Sultano, Pino Cuttaia, Vincenzo Candiano, Natale Briguglio, Toni Lo Coco, David Tamburini, Angelo Treno (his was the most successful dish, Sandwich with beef tartare, foie gras escalope, dried tomatoes and guanciale – just writing about it, suddenly reactivates the salivation), Claudio Ruta, Christian Busca, Pietro D’Agostino, Giovanni Guarneri and the guys from Antica Filanda. Only Corrado Assenza was absent, a rather noisy absence, in fact.

With them, also enjoying their meals, were Graziano («every month I spend 20 days in Moscow and 10 in Sicily»), two famous extra-Sicilian ambassadors such as Massimiliano Alajmo(«I have a Southern soul, my wife is from Calabria») and Gennaro Esposito («15 years ago Sicily had the problems Campania has today, and they overcame them splendidly») and the chefs of Mesali in Irpinia, a twinning to recreate the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the theme of good food.

Making excellence thrive is certainly not an easy task in Sicily, people were saying the following day, as part of the post-party considerations: while it is true that «in Sicily nothing is missing, in fact there’s even too much» (© Fausto Arrighi, outgoing director of Michelin Italia) or that «the region can boast more products from the countryside and from the sea than any other» (Enzo Vizzari, director of L'Espresso’sguides), it is also true, reminded Ciccio Sultano, «that, in 2010, while in Cataluña an investment of 40 million euros had a turn over of 69 million overnight stays in the hotels, here, our region spent 100 million for 15 million roosms. Not counting those who go shopping abroad with our money».

It was also said that one should erase the concept of «tourist tax» from all vocabularies. It would be necessary to «rewrite, from scratch, the logic of catering schools, a heritage that was never put to use» (Pino Cuttaia), and that «it would be better if we concentrated on infrastructures». If in the Parliament men were to think with the mind of our Ulisses, perhaps all these considerations would become concrete.