Palermo: Sicilian Cooking Class & Market Tour with Lunch

4.99

(280 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

I didn’t really know what to expect from a Sicilian cooking class in Palermo — I just wanted to eat better pasta and maybe not embarrass myself in front of my Italian friends. But the morning started with this easy kind of excitement, meeting near Porta Carini, right where the Capo market spills out into the street. Our guide, Francesca, waved us over and immediately started chatting about what was fresh that day. There was this wild smell of mint and fried something (panelle?) drifting through the air, mixed with people calling out prices and old men arguing about artichokes. I tried to keep up as we picked out ingredients — she let me pick lemons but told me which ones were “too sad” for real Sicilian cooking. I still think about how she said that.

Walking back to their kitchen felt like being let in on a family secret — it was cool inside, tiled floors, soft light coming through high windows. We washed our hands and got straight into prepping arancine (the saffron rice is stickier than you’d guess), then made fresh pasta from scratch. My dough looked like it needed help but Francesca just laughed and showed me how to knead it properly. She told stories about her grandmother’s tricks for perfecting cannoli filling — I tried piping one and mine exploded a bit but nobody cared. The whole place smelled like tomato sauce simmering with wild fennel, sweet and sharp at the same time.

Lunch was honestly my favorite part — everyone squeezed around a long table, passing plates of swordfish and involtini di carne, pouring local wine that tasted almost salty (in a good way). Someone asked if we could have seconds on cassata cake and Francesca just shrugged: “In Sicily there’s always more.” We finished with tiny cups of coffee and homemade almond liqueur that burned just enough going down. It felt less like a class and more like being adopted for an afternoon by people who really care about what they cook — or maybe just love feeding strangers until they’re not strangers anymore.