You’re drawn into a symphony of flavors, a chorus of colors when you push open the door of Bar Gardenia in Cardillo, humble borgata on Palermo’s outskirts. Even the entryway display greets you with a cheery kaleidoscope welcome: a colorful carretto siciliano, the brilliant colors of a Nino Parrucca ceramic plate and the varied palette of martorana, the almond paste fruit masterpieces we know as “marzipan.” Also called “pasta reale” (“royal pastry”), palermitano tradition recounts that in the twelfth century, the Martorana convent Benedictine nuns molded almond paste sweets into citrus fruit shapes to adorn their garden’s bare trees as a regal welcome to the visiting Pope.
Other almond paste treats – “le sinfonie” cookies – fill trays in the bar’s pastry section: yes, a “symphony” for the palate. And for the eye: crushed pistachios enhance some of the almond paste sweets and bright green pistachio creams top many of the colorful tortes.
The deep reds of the gelo di melone alongside make a perfect chromatic pairing. Made with the juice of watermelon (thickened with wheat starch and enhanced with cloves or cinnamon), gelo di melone also fills pastry shells or airy light croissants, topped off with red dollops of the gelo, or is enjoyed on its own as a gelo di melone pudding.
Bright green cassatelle (mini-cassate siciliane) topped with red candied cherries catch the eye. Sheep’s milk-ricotta stars in the cassatelle fillings and also in the cannoli, baked genovesi and in the deep-fried iris pastries (enriched with a chocolate/ricotta filling). (Not hungry enough for a cannoli? Try a mini cannolicchio….)
Look to your right and you’ll see the colorful display of homemade gelati, including a flavor or two found prevalently in Sicily: the orange prickly pear, the deep purple mulberry. You might see young barista Giovannino sliding brioche rolls off a baking sheet, piling them on top of the gelato case for gelato con brioche (preferred by many to the cone or cup).
Another barista, Giovanni, might be preparing a tray of mignon di gelato tray for a customer: mini-ice cream cones, bite-sized squares and ice-cream dollops on sticks of every imaginable gelato flavor. In the freezer below the trays of mignon, a bottle of espresso chills for the cafe’ freddo. Tronchetti (“little trunks”) di gelato are often ordered as birthday cakes and tartufi di gelato – whipped-cream-filled ice-cream “truffles” – are other Bar Gardenia favorites.
The savory enticements here are as varied as the sweet ones: arancine (“small oranges”) rice balls – can be filled with ragu sauce and peas, mozzarella and cooked ham or spinach and mozzarella. The fillings of calzoni – a sort of folded pizza – are just as varied and calzoni are served baked or deep-fried. Spiedini are deep-fried too and are hefty breaded sandwiches filled with a meat sauce or meat sauce and peas: not for the faint of heart (or of stomach!). Pizzotti are calzoni with mozzarella and tomato on top, pizza-like. And around noon, a tray of lasagne appears in the case of savories.
Workers and businessmen, stonemasons and lawyers, munch the goodness at the bar, espresso afterwards (the ubiquitous plastic cup of water offered alongside). Class barriers are knocked down at Bar Gardenia, as all social classes share in the symphony of flavors, chorus of colors.
