Mary Taylor Simeti

The Grande Dame of Sicilian food and my food heroine from even before we met

The first time I went to Sicily was more than 20 years ago when a friend rented the most beautiful property on the eastern side of the island, very near Noto, and invited me and several other friends to spend a couple of weeks exploring that part of Sicily. I immediately fell in love with the island and its landscapes that reminded me so much of both my home countries, Lebanon and Syria; and of course, I fell in love with the food. For the latter, I had with me the perfect guide. Mary’s magisterial “Pomp and Sustenance, Twenty Five centuries of Sicilian Food”. I read the book from cover to cover on that trip and used it to make jasmine ice cream, to tell the cook where we were staying which dishes to prepare for us, and which restaurants and food places to go to from those that Mary had listed at the end of the book. I didn’t know her then and even though I drove back to Palermo and stayed there for a few days, I never got to meet her on that trip.

A couple of years later, I returned to the island with Susan Friedland, my then publisher and friend, and that time I made sure we met with Mary. She suggested lunch at Piccolo Napoli, and at last, I got to sit and talk with the author of one of my favourite food books - I say food because Pomp and Sustenance is much more than a cookbook. The lunch was delicious, the company delightful and the setting charming. This marked the beginning of a beautiful friendship that eventually led to my move to Sicily.

It was really because of Mary that I decided to have a home there. A few years after we met, we were both invited to Australia to present at the Sydney Food Festival. I suggested we go on to Melbourne after the festival and one day while we were there, it was the end of October, we started talking about the olive harvest at Bosco Flaconeria, her farm near Palermo. They were going to start harvesting soon after her return and I immediately asked if I could go and write about it. Mary kindly invited me to stay in her son’s little house, down from hers. As I watched them harvesting the olives and taking them to the frantoio (olive press), I remembered the summers I had spent at my aunt Zahiyeh’s home in Mashta el-Helou, where everything we ate came from her lands and was prepared by her. I decided there and then that Sicily would be the place for me to go home without really doing so - I had already been toying with the idea of leaving London for sunnier climes but had not yet decided where.

I asked Mary to introduce me to someone who could find me a piece of land overlooking the sea where I could build my dream modern house. She immediately put me in touch with a friend of hers, Giovanni Matta, who also became a friend and who after a few email exchanges lined up a few properties to show me. By then, I had started renting Mary’s casetta so that I could visit Sicily regularly, preparing for my future life. Giovanni and I settled on a day to view the properties, and it was on that very day that I found what was to become my mini domain. It was the third property we visited and as we were driving up to it, on the winding road that leads to Erice with spectacular views of the sea and Monte Cofano, I knew it was going to be what I was looking for. I agreed to buy it on the spot but of course there were several steps to go through before it officially became mine (the pic below is of my view at sunset).

And so began my Sicilian odyssey, in no small part thanks to Mary, who also helped me at the beginning when I spoke very little Italian and knew no one apart from her, Giovanni and the estate agent. It all sounds quite idyllic but things didn’t quite go the way I expected but this will be for another post/s! Anyhow, Mary is still on her farm and I am now in a flat in Trapani, with a beautiful terrace overlooking the sea instead of in a stunning modern house, and we see each other regularly when I am there.