This past Saturday evening, we were very fortunate to welcome two friends and culinary luminaries to Cornman Farms for An Evening in Sicily Dinner, a very special evening of Sicilian food and camaraderie.

For over 30 years, Zingerman’s has been traveling the world to bring the most interesting and flavorful foods home to America. Beginning in the late 1990s, we turned that around and began to take our guests directly to the sources of these foods – places like Tuscany, Spain, and Sicily, and Zingerman’s Food Tours was born. Sometime during all those year of back and forth travel, we met Gioacchino Passalaqua, an Italian artisanal food exporter and native Sicilian and a partnership was born.

Recently, Gioacchino Passalacqua, who co-leads the Sicily Food Tour with Zingerman’s Food Tours, told us he was coming to town, and that he was bringing a one of Sicily’s top chefs with him. Claudio Ruta is a Michelin star recipient for his restaurant, La Fenice, in a beautifully restored 1800s farmhouse at the Hotel Villa Carlotta in Ragusa, Sicily. The area is renowned for its bounty of amazing foods, and Claudio brought many of those signature flavors along with him for the dinner. Gioacchino—an accomplished cook and sommelier in his own right— and Claudio created a menu that truly showcased the amazing  the amazing foods of Sicily in six delicious courses with wine pairings.

Everyone was in full agreement that Chefs Ruta and Passalacqua brought some of the very best that Sicily has to offer to our cooler climes. It was a night that will remain in our memories, and we’ve put together a lovely photo gallery  from Lola Grace Photography to share it with you.

Chef Gioacchino Passalacqua, Chef Kieron Hales, Chef Claudio Ruta

See you soon!