Palermo Street Food Tours

Palermo eats standing up. The city’s most famous food is sold from market counters, fryers and carts in the old quarters, and most of it costs a few euros a piece. A VirtualTourist poll in 2012, later widely credited to Forbes, put Palermo fifth among the world’s street food cities, the only Italian city on the list. The poll is old now. The food has not changed much.

A street food tour gives you that food in the order a local would eat it, at the stalls a local would choose, with someone to explain what is in the roll before you bite. This page compares the tours that do it, and the guides below cover the dishes, the markets and the timing in more detail.

The markets you walk through

Palermo has four historic street markets, and most food tours use one or two of them.

Capo fills the streets behind Porta Carini in the Monte di Pietà quarter, with fish, produce and fryers turning out panelle and crocchè. It is less touristy than its neighbours, and it is the market most daytime tours visit, including the Street Food and History Walking Tour (our breakdown).

Ballarò, in the Albergheria quarter, is the big everyday market, loud with vendors calling their prices. Its stalls run from early morning into the evening, with a smaller market on Sunday mornings.

The Vucciria, around Piazza Caracciolo, has few daytime stalls left and comes alive in the evening, when the grills for stigghiola and the counters for pani ca meusa take over the square. Evening tours finish here.

Borgo Vecchio, near the port, is the smallest of the four, a morning market by day and a place for late grills at weekends.

Our guide to Palermo’s street food markets covers each one, with when to go.

What you will eat

The core of every tour is the same handful of fried and baked things. An arancina is a breaded ball of saffron rice, filled either with meat ragù and peas or with ham and cheese. In Palermo it is feminine, arancina, not arancino. Panelle are thin chickpea-flour fritters, usually eaten in a sesame roll with crocchè, small potato croquettes. Sfincione is Palermo’s thick, soft pizza, topped with tomato, onion, anchovy and breadcrumbs.

Then the dishes that divide the group. Pani ca meusa is veal spleen and lung, boiled then fried in lard and served in a roll, either plain with lemon or with ricotta and caciocavallo. Stigghiola is lamb or kid intestine wrapped round a spring onion and grilled. Most tours include at least one of them, and nobody minds if you pass.

Tours end on something sweet: a cannolo filled to order with sheep’s-milk ricotta, or gelato, or granita in summer. The full list, with photos, is in what to eat on a Palermo street food tour.

Choosing a tour

The tours on this site differ on four things: how much food, which market, time of day, and whether drinks are included.

The featured Original Street Food & Market Tour by Streaty (our breakdown) is the most complete. It walks through Capo and the Vucciria with a group of up to 12, includes three drinks, and serves enough food to replace a full meal. That is why it costs more than the shorter tasting walks.

If you want the most-reviewed tour on this site, it is the Street Food and History Walking Tour, with five tastings, a cannolo and more of the cathedral and Quattro Canti along the way. The lowest-priced tour we break down is the small-group Sicilian Street Food Tour (our breakdown). Streaty also runs an evening version that finishes in the Vucciria. And if you would rather ride than walk, there is a street food bike tour.

For a side-by-side table and a pick for each kind of traveller, read which Palermo street food tour is right for you.

Morning or evening

Morning is market time. Ballarò and Capo are at their busiest from about nine until noon, and the fish stalls pack up by mid-afternoon. A morning tour shows you the markets working and fits in before lunch, which the tour replaces.

Evening tours trade the produce stalls for grills, bars and the Vucciria’s late counters. In summer they also avoid the heat: Palermo is on Italy’s national heat-alert list, and July afternoons are often hot enough to make three hours on foot hard work. Our best time for a Palermo street food tour guide goes month by month.

Practical notes

Come hungry. These tours are mostly fried or baked food, eaten standing, with few places to sit, and the walking adds up over three hours.

Dietary needs vary by tour, so read each listing. Panelle and crocchè are usually vegetarian. Arancina al burro classically contains ham, and sfincione has anchovies. Streaty’s listing says its tours cannot be adapted for vegans or for gluten or lactose intolerance. Several operators can arrange vegetarian alternatives if you say so when you book.

The markets are crowded. As in any busy Italian city centre, keep your bag zipped and in front of you, and your phone out of back pockets. A guide makes the lanes easier to read, and that is a fair part of why people book one. Whether it is worth paying for is a real question, and we answer it in is a Palermo street food tour worth it.

Arriving by cruise ship? The terminal is on the edge of the old town, about 15 to 20 minutes’ walk from the Quattro Canti, and the Street Food and History tour offers a 10:00 pickup at the port on request.

Check dates for the Original Street Food & Market Tour.