Mazzarò Sea Palace opens new gourmet restaurant on the water in Taormina, Sicily

V Retreats, the luxury division of VOIhotels, announces a new gourmet restaurant at Mazzarò Sea Palace, its 5-star, luxury hotel on the beach in Taormina, Sicily. The intimate restaurant, BLUM, opened in June with a menu of “disruptive Sicilian dishes” created by Executive Chef Riccardo Fazio. The restaurant joins the hotel’s signature Armònia restaurant, which enjoys a new look this season. And along with its Almarè bar, each overlook the bay of Mazzarò from splendid panoramic terraces.

BLUM seats 12 guests at 6, transparent-glass tables that seem to rest on the water, hovering on a platform balanced on the breaking waves. In front of guests is only the sea, the private beach and the uncontaminated nature of the bay of Mazzarò bookended by boulders protruding from the water.

Riccardo Fazio’s dishes create an unexpected balance between the acidic, the citrus, the fresh, each finding space in unusual combinations on the BLUM menu. And yet Fazio’s menu never neglects the territory that hosts it, instead he contextualizes Sicilian cuisine in a wider dimension and in an absolutely contemporary guise.

Like his ravioli, which does not have Sicilian origins, but is paired with Sicilian ingredients, vegetables such as wild chicory, endive and a sauce of Tuma Persa, a now rare cheese on the island; crowned with mullet roe. His eel is marinated with yuzu and non-alcoholic apple cider; while the alcoholic part is given by Calvados (apple brandy); it is then cooked over a wood fire in a Kamado, which gives it the taste of barbecue and presented with Granny Smith sauce and a potato millefeuille.

Once the walls, the classic tablecloths and the territorial references have been removed, BLUM leaves room only for the sound of the sea and for Riccardo Fazio’s cuisine, free from any stereotype.