Street food stories: Sicily (part 2)

King Cannolo 👑🐑

The cannoli at Extrabar. All images taken from the Eater video linked below.

A walk through Palermo’s bustling main strip presents no shortage of little carts with snack-size portions of local street food neatly stacked behind the glass: chickpea fritters called panelle, plates of fried calamari, perfectly round and golden arancine, and cannoli covered with chocolate chips or bright green pistachios.

The cannoli are particularly enticing and although they’ve been sitting out for a while, if you were to buy one, you’d probably be reasonably satisfied. But they’re a tad too sweet and the shell is starting to soften. This is not the best of the best. For that, you’d have to go the extra mile.

If the arancina is the queen of Sicilian street food, the cannolo is the king (alas, I do not argue with Italian gendered naming conventions) and like many kings, he lives secluded away from the rest of the population.

So to experience the best cannoli in Sicily, you head out of the center and through the outskirts of Palermo – where the drivers will make you thankful you got the full insurance on your rental car – and then towards the mountains. You wind your way up tiny roads that pass through sleepy villages as the scenery turns all shades of green, a welcome relief from the dusty city below.

Up, up, up you go until suddenly everything is flat again. This is Piana degli Albanesi, or Plain of the Albanians. The name is not random. The town was founded in the 15th century by Christian Albanians fleeing persecution under Ottoman rule. Even today, the area’s road signs feature village names in Italian and an Albanian dialect still spoken by the majority of the town’s 6,000 residents who proudly uphold ancestral traditions in dress, music, and other customs.

The defining feature of this plateau is a large lake set against the backdrop of a long, rounded mountain. Sheep graze on the sloping hills – they’re essential to what we are about to experience.

The town is relatively quiet, even on a beautiful spring day when Sicily’s major cities and beaches are swarming with tourists. Only a few – the wisest – have made their way into the hills and now are parked outside of Extrabar, a cafe and bakery in the main square across from the village’s Italo-Albanian church.

Father and son Nicola and Luca Petta in front of the family bakery, Extrabar.

Finally, you’ve made it – the fortress of the cannolo awaits you. You walk inside. Empty shells fried to golden brown perfection are piled on top of the counter, but there are no cannoli in sight.

All this effort and we’re too late! But it’s only 10 a.m.!

Nicola Petta comes out from behind the counter and gives you a warm, knowing smile. You’re here for the cannoli. Everyone is.

“At Extrabar, our cannoli are made fresh to order, like an espresso,” he says. 

Of course they are! That’s why you left Palermo and came all the way here. To try the very best. 

You order, and moments later you hear a scraping sound as the barman’s spatula scoops smooth ricotta into the brittle pastry shell. He adds candied orange peel to each end. It’s everything you hoped for. Your mission is complete.

Two main legends aim to explain how the cannolo first came to be. One states that the concubines of Arab princes developed the recipe using sugar, pistachios, and candied fruits, ingredients that were first introduced to the island during the period of the Emirate of Sicily (827–1091). Evidence for this theory comes from the fact that similar fried-tube desserts exist in various cultures across the Middle East and North Africa. 

The second legend credits the origins to nuns who made the treat as a symbol of fertility before the annual Carnival celebrations. 

While the inventor of the cannolo remains a mystery, its Sicilian roots are uncontested. The first known written record of the recipe dates to the year 70 when the Roman lawyer and writer Cicero visited the island and mentioned “a flour-based, cylinder-shaped pastry made with milk.” Sounds like a cannolo to me!

While the recipe varies slightly from bakery to bakery, the ingredients list is fairly limited. The dough is made by combining wine (or sometimes brandy) with lard, before adding flour and sugar. The exact proportions of Extrabar’s recipe are secret, but Nicola’s son Luca, walked me through the process when I visited on assignment for Eater in 2022. 

Once the dough is rolled out, Nicola uses a worn cutter handed down through the generations to create a signature diamond shape for his shells – most other bakeries use a rounded stamp. Then he wraps them around beech wood sticks, which degrade quicker but are more authentic than the steel tubes used elsewhere. The name “cannolo” comes from the Italian word for reeds or canes, which were originally used to shape the shells. The shells are fried in boiling lard until they’re golden brown and covered in bubbles, a texture created by the wine.

Frying the shells.

The Pettas say the shells are Extrabar’s claim to fame, and they’re now shipped worldwide. But the ricotta is the real reason you make the trek to Piana degli Albanese. The town became known for its cannoli because of the quality of its cheese, which Luca told me is extra delicious in the springtime when the sheep pass the taste of fresh grass into their milk.

The recipe is simple. Fresh, raw, sheep’s milk ricotta is delivered to the bakery from a local dairy. Luca first assesses the texture of the cheese – harder ricotta must be softened with more sugar. Soft ricotta should get less sugar or it will become too runny and won’t be suitable for filling the shells. Once the sugar is added, Luca passes the cheese through a motorized sieve to create a whipped texture.

The sweetened cheese won’t keep for long, which is why Extrabar only serves its complete cannoli on-site and you’d be hard-pressed to find the same high-quality product in Palermo.

Straining the ricotta.

Even Sicilians themselves are willing to make the journey. Luca brings the fresh shells and ricotta filling into the bar where a rowdy group of Italian middle schoolers have just disembarked from their bus and are crowded around the counter eagerly awaiting the cannoli.

The barman mixes a few handfuls of chocolate chips into the ricotta at the last minute to avoid tainting the color, and then he fills each shell at lightning speed.

I wait until the kids have filed out to take my first bite. While Extrabar makes a half-kilo version, I’m holding the standard shell, and it’s heavy for its size. The shell is crunchy and flaky, but when it shatters only a few pieces fall into my lap. The rest are held in place by the ricotta filling, which is creamy and only lightly sweet. It tastes cheesier than I expected but in a good way. It’s rich and I can only eat one, but that’s the point – a cannolo is meant to be savored.

Just outside the village on the road back to Palermo, I pull over and take out my camera. It’s quiet and there’s a light breeze. I see the lake down below and a few sheep in the distance. I take a picture of them as a way of thanking them for their service.