La Timpa - ACIREALE

Having now completed our Sicilian trip I can now say that I thought this restaurant gave us food that really depicted the Sicilian style of cooking sweet and sour. It’s a funny little place and it’s on its own time with serving and taking orders, but if you can get there and have lunch, it’s very worthwhile doing. We walked down to the town a little too late in the afternoon for some of the dishes, but the caponata and swordfish with eggplant are definitely the best that we had. My suggestion is to get there by 1pm. We were there at about 3pm and we had the last servings of the caponata. Don’t expect to hurry eating here, but do go and enjoy the experience. Be aware that if you don’t wish to walk back up the hill to Acireale, you might like to time your visit with the irregular running (on a Sunday) bus. We managed to talk a local into giving us a lift for an agreed price! It helps when one of your fellow travellers speaks the dialect!

First of all, the lady of the house is a fantastic cook and the food is super fresh. To enjoy this experience, you should show the chef a little kindness and respect, and the rest will take care of itself. This is excellent an Sicilian fish and granita restaurant with nice wine and I suspect it hasn’t changed a bit for years. Enjoy this experience!

Well, the La Tipia is a strange place. The Restaurant looks a bit like a big strorage with all Kind of Stuff laying around. No menu, but you choose the Fish you want to eat out of the fridge, which Stands in the restaurant. No side dishes and as primi plati only spagethi, with Tomatosauce or with muscles. Overall, the food is okay and the Restaurant is Kind of an experience, as it is a real strange and unique place.

We decided to eat somwhere on the way from Taormina to the airport of Catania. As we spent more time in Taormina than we planned we fall into siesta time so it was very hard to find a restaurant that is opened. We stopped at a place that according to tripadvisor does not close, it was just closing when we arrived. Then i tried to call minimum 5 places, all of them were closed. I’ve found this place. I made a call and using the translater get to know that we can go there. The town is super cute. Finding the place was easy, but it seemed to be closed, at least the reataurant part of it and it also seemed very simple. We did not care as we were hungry as hell so entered the place hoping we can get something to eat. Don’t expect a nice enterieur rather expect the best seafood and a heartwarming service!!! The lady, who I talked with was so nice that she prepared food for us, even though theye were closed! We ate octopus fried calamari and veggies, these were available at that time! It was prepared only for us and was fresh as hell! If you want to experience the real home made ‘grandmas’ food, leave all of the fancy places behind and came here! You won’t regret for sure!! I loved the food even if I am not really into seafood (but I was hungry) and maybe thanks for this lovely Sicilian Lady, I will change my mind and will start eating more seafood! Thanks for all of the kindness and awesome food we get! The atmosphere is really special! Local people are around just as we like it! this is a real experience! Thanks for all of those restaurants whose were not oepened!

Timpa is a very typical experience of traditional dishes from Sicily: there is no specific menu, everything is decided on the moment depending by what 's available from the fish market, and there is only the house wine,red or white. The place is very colorful, it 's like taking part to a family lunch: the old lady owning the place, zia Timpa, is the one cooking. She doesn 't speak English, but she propose the options and the best choice is just to trust her. We had the best tuna steak ever, roasted octopus, and a great caponata (sweet and sour peppers). Everything very simple, the tuna and the octopus were lightly marinated with just lemon, oil and herbs, but so delicious that was more than enough. Unfortunately we discovered too late that the must have is the homemade granita as dessert: next time we won 't miss it!