La Locanda del Colonnello

La Locanda del Colonnello is the Michelin-starred dining room of Hotel Palazzo Failla — a four-star superior boutique hotel occupying a beautifully restored 18th-century palazzo in Modica Alta on Via Blandini, three streets behind the Chiesa di San Giorgio. The restaurant holds one Michelin star under chef Francesco Sultano. The dining room itself sits in the original palazzo's frescoed ballroom — the hand-painted 18th-century Sicilian-baroque ceiling has been preserved exactly as built — with a south-facing summer terrace overlooking the entire Modica Bassa lower-town canyon below.

Sultano's cuisine is contemporary Sicilian with a strong personal sensibility. Signatures include a hand-rolled tagliolino with Mazzara red prawn and Cetara colatura; a slow-cooked Iblei lamb shoulder with thyme and rosemary; a Pachino-tomato risotto with Avola almonds; a wood-fired Adriatic-Ionian dentice with Ortigia salt; the famous 'crispella al cioccolato di Modica' — a Modica-chocolate-and-Iblei-ricotta dessert that uses the Bonajuto cold-process chocolate (the only Modica restaurant supplied by the historic 16th-century Bonajuto pasticceria).

The wine list runs to 500 references with deep Sicilian smallholder coverage — Etna DOC, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Frappato, Nero d'Avola — and a respectable Italian-national section. Sommelier Sultano himself runs the floor.

The dining room and summer terrace together hold forty-eight covers — twenty-four in the frescoed indoor ballroom, twenty-four on the south-facing terrace overlooking the canyon. The summer terrace is the experience: the most photographed view-driven dining setting in Modica.

La Locanda del Colonnello is the impress-the-client room in Modica when the brief is view-driven and historic. The 18th-century frescoed ballroom and the canyon-view terrace are the conversation; the Michelin star answers the credibility question; the dinner-and-stay format at Hotel Palazzo Failla means a complete weekend is easy to arrange. Book the south-terrace four-top at sunset.