Cortile Pepe

Cortile Pepe is the gastronomic dining room of chef Gioacchino Gaglio. A Cefalù native who took the Via Nicola Botta courtyard in 2014 and built the village's most reliable serious-Sicilian programme. The restaurant occupies a converted 17th-century palazzo courtyard near the Cathedral square, with stone-vaulted ceilings, hand-carved limestone walls, an open kitchen at the back, and forty-eight covers across an indoor dining room and a cobblestoned summer courtyard.

Gaglio's cooking is contemporary Sicilian with deep regional sourcing. The five-course tasting rotates seasonally; signatures include a hand-rolled busiate alla trapanese with Mazzara red prawn; a slow-cooked Iblei lamb shoulder with thyme and rosemary; a Pachino-tomato risotto with Avola almonds; a wood-fired Cefalù dentice with Tyrrhenian-coast salt; the famous 'cassatina al pistacchio di Bronte'. A Bronte-pistachio cassata that Gaglio has refined for over a decade.

The wine list runs to 350 references with deep Sicilian smallholder coverage. The volcanic Etna DOC, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Frappato, the western-Sicily Marsala. And a respectable Italian-national section. Glass pours start at €5 and the by-the-glass programme runs a generous ten-glass Sicilian flight.

The dining room and summer courtyard together hold sixty covers. Twenty-four indoors in the stone-vaulted dining room, thirty-six in the cobblestoned summer courtyard. Service is family-run. Gaglio himself runs the open kitchen and walks the room before the cheese course.

Cortile Pepe is the proposal-grade table in Cefalù. The converted 17th-century palazzo courtyard is among the most architecturally significant dining settings in coastal Sicily, the small-scale courtyard means total privacy, and the seven-course pacing accommodates a slow-moving evening. Brief Gaglio three days ahead and ask for the corner two-top in the courtyard's deepest section.