pho-licious: An exemplary plate of pasta

After being semi-roasted in the heat of Favignana, we needed a restaurant extremely close to where we were staying. Fortunately, Salirosso was literally just round the corner.

We'd tried some Gamberi Rossi (red prawns) earlier in Scopello and we were craving more. So we shared three dishes: firstly, gamberi rossi with paccheri (large, flat tubes of pasta) and cherry tomatoes – this was probably the best pasta dish we ate on the whole trip. The pasta was immaculately al dente, the sauce had the perfect balance of saltiness and sweetness, and these prawns – well, they were just phenomenal. I'll shower these prawns with more praise in another post.

Next, a scampi (langoustine) soup with linguine. This was quite tasty, but the soup was a tad too salty for our taste. The spaghetti a la vongole (with clams) was better – whose creamy sauce was given an interesting twist by being blended with radicchio (a type of bitter red lettuce). But, when eaten alongside the red prawn paccheri, these dishes were always going to be overshadowed.

But Salirosso is not just a one trick pony (or should I say red prawn). They also make extremely good desserts. Their Torta Salirosso, whose almond, ricotta and chocolate flavours balanced each other with surpeme precision, was pretty sublime. And their pistachio parfait, which oozed the sweet nuttiness of those little green gems which by this point of the trip I was addicted to, another winner.