SPRING
2023
Daniela Sclafani talks about her...
We decided to dedicate this space to a woman who with her creative flair and her ability gave life together with the owner of the Quintocanto Hotel & SPA, Giovanni Ruisi, to a gastronomic proposal where elegance is whispered by places and tasting proposals, where food and wine become the excuse to meet and live an authentic experience.
We asked Daniela Sclafani, general manager of the Florida cooperative, to tell us where the passion that she transmits in every moment of her day in the work she does comes from.
I started this work a bit for fun a bit for passion.
Together with some friends we started to organize tea itinerants around the city. We used to make grandma’s pies and set up special places in the historic center as authentic tea rooms, where you can come to enjoy this drink and more.
For many people from Palermo, it was an opportunity to discover the historic center, but above all it was an opportunity to meet, to spend time relaxing with friends.
In 2014 I met Giovanni Ruisi, owner of the Quintocanto Hotel & SPA, who proposed me to manage with him the restaurant of the hotel and from there the cooperative Florida was formed and we started this path that first saw the rebirth of the Locanda del Gusto, new brand of the restaurant of the Quintocanto Hotel & SPA, with a simple and welcoming restaurant that was available to hotel guests, but also open outside, to passers-by, tourists and people from Palermo. A very simple basic cuisine made from local ingredients that, with the great help of chef Tommaso Stancampiano, who put a lot in this path of rebirth, looks to the tradition of my family.
Gradually people began to call us because they wanted our dishes and our menus at home for their events, so we began to do many small events both in the structure and at the home of our guests.
So it was that gradually a whole series of opportunities arrived that with Giovanni Ruisi and our Cooperative we began to seize and carry on.
One of them is the botanical garden that has become the exciting "Talea" experience.
This beautiful space also happened a bit by chance, we discovered the opening of a call for the management of coffee services, while we organized an event within the lush setting of the botanical garden.
As always with all the passion we are capable of, we participated in the competition and we won.
So we renovated a greenhouse that was a bit abandoned inside the Botanical Garden and we transformed it into our café. An authentic corner of paradise, open 365 days a year and which in summer turns into the ideal space for beautiful aperitifs.
And now our new challenge: Bellini, a historic pizzeria in Palermo that we have recently detected and that will open soon and that we are rethinking as a meeting place where you can drink a good wine or enjoy a good cocktail with the accompaniment of a gourmet pizza.
For us, food is discovery, it is travel, it is color and joy. Food is land, it is sea. Food is exchange. The food is fast or slow, but it is also home and why not road... a road to go among the flavors of a rich land like ours.
Happy to have you at our table.
Credits to Laura Lo Mascolo