Ristorante Pizzeria Italia — Restaurant in Palermo

What a wonderful place. The first time I was here was many months ago with a Palermitani (which was a bit of a struggle due to my lack of Italian language skills) - but my glance at the tables around it really boded well for the food.

Today, in search of this very restaurant, my attention was drawn to this place in the alleyway in a very charming and elegant way: with a very friendly, welcoming smile.

I had something meaty in mind and something spicy with salsa.

It was the surprise for me in 12 months: for the first time, they were serving home-made, wonderfully spicy chilli pepper salsa. It's a dream!

My meat variation: far too extensive for me, but delicious. The bolognese on the pasta side dish: the best in 12 months in Palermo.

The open wine with the aperitif: delicious!

The small bottle of water comes in plastic, but I don't care because of the great salsa. The cloth napkin is fabulous: colour, texture, size - feel. (Maybe I can buy one?! 🥰)

Very grateful to have found this restaurant again.

Food: 5/5 Wine: 5/5 Salsa: 10/5 Ambience: 5/5 Service, friendliness, charm: 10/5 Value for money: 5/5 Wifi (for digital nomads like me):...

Great pasta and pizza, clean decor. Also has an English menu, so kudos.

They have a professional oven so you know the pizza's gotta be good.

Shelled shrimps fettuccine - the sauce was full, and the pasta was just the perfect shade of Al dente. It's not Italian's thing to process the intestines out of the shrimp, which is why there's a sandy taste to the shrimps sometimes but it's def manageable here. Since they do their pasta well here also, I'd love to try their fresh pastas next time

Palermo style pizza - the dough was crispy and delicious. We didn't try the flat bread dough or the whole wheat, just went with what they recommended because there were too many good choices. Palermo style came with artichokes, anchovies and one of their local cheeses, grated, so when cooked it was tougher and added to the texture of the pizza....

Website says they were open at 5:30. We were excited to try our first experience in Italy at this place. However once we got there we opened the door and tried to ensure they were actually opened, as we did see a few people eating in there. Some bald younger gentleman with black glasses rolled his eyes at us, turned away and had another lady deal with us because I guess he didn't want to be bothered by us. The lady was kind enough to tell us they were closed so we left. However this experience left us with a bad taste in our mouths to ask if any other places were open all the way back to our hotel afraid of upsetting anyone else. For as much as we know, maybe Americans aren't welcome there, so just beware before you go. I'm sure the food is great, but we never got a chance to find out. A not so great start to...