Fattoria delle Torri

Fattoria delle Torri is the Michelin-starred dining room founded by celebrated chef Peppe Barone in the 1980s and now run by his daughters Sara and Elisa Barone — a generational handover that has preserved the Michelin star uninterrupted. The restaurant occupies a converted 18th-century palazzo in Modica Alta on Vico Napolitano with a hand-restored 18th-century kitchen courtyard, original Sicilian-baroque limestone walls, and forty-eight covers across two rooms.

The cooking is innovative Sicilian-traditional — the daughters take a contemporary modern twist on the classics that their father refined for thirty years. Signatures include a hand-rolled tagliolino with Mazzara red prawn and Cetara colatura; a slow-cooked Iblei lamb shoulder with thyme and rosemary from the Barone family farm; a Pachino-tomato risotto with Avola almonds; a wood-fired Adriatic-Ionian dentice with Ortigia salt; a Modica-chocolate-and-Bronte-pistachio dessert that the Barone sisters refined as their signature plate.

The wine list runs to 400 references with deep Sicilian smallholder coverage — Etna DOC, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Frappato, Nero d'Avola — 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. Service is family-run — the Barone sisters rotate the floor and the captains have worked the property for years. Fattoria delle Torri is the dining room that visiting Sicilian senators, Iblei farming families, and serious-occasion diners use as a default address — the room has hosted a generation of regional culture and food-industry dinners across forty years.

Fattoria delle Torri is the proposal-grade table in Modica Alta when the brief is generational craft. The Barone family ownership for over forty years settles the credibility question; the converted 18th-century palazzo setting is the conversation; the daughters' modern interpretation of the family kitchen is genuinely distinctive. Book the corner two-top in the smaller dining room.