Gelateria Al Cassaro: Gelato on the Oldest Street in Palermo
My photos from Palermo agree on two times on a single October day: 6:47 p.m. and one minute past midnight. The same gelateria twice, a different cone each time - metadata make a more reliable witness than a receipt.
Gelateria Al Cassaro is an artisan gelateria on the main street of historic Palermo, open until midnight, with a display case that rotates through some thirty flavors of gelato. Italian ice cream is the best in the world as far as I'm concerned; I've written that many times and I'll write it plenty more times. Al Cassaro just gave me one more piece of evidence.
The Street Palermo Still Calls by Its Old Name
The gelateria borrowed its name from the street it stands on. Officially that's Via Vittorio Emanuele, except everyone here knows the official name and almost nobody uses it - to Palermitans it is still the Cassaro, from the Arabic al-Qasr, the fortress. The oldest street in the city, laid out when the Phoenicians founded the place, runs in a straight line from the cathedral down to the Porta Felice gate by the sea. A Spanish viceroy renamed it Via Toledo in the 16th century, and a unified Italy renamed it again after its own king. Palermo duly noted both renamings and carried on calling the street after a fortress from the days of Arab rule. Today the Cassaro is a pedestrian promenade lined with stalls, bars and gelaterias; the one at number 214 has the street's name right on its sign, and it's a few minutes' walk up from the sea.
Thirty Tubs and One Flavor Called Cassaro
Gloria Ciprì, a bartender by trade, opened the gelateria in June 2013. She filled the case with the Sicilian classics - pistachios from Raffadali, almonds, jasmine - and next to them mango and other tropical fruit she buys straight from growers in Thailand. In 2021 Gambero Rosso listed the place among the thirteen best gelaterias in Sicily. One flavor carries the name of both the shop and the street: Cassaro, peanut butter with caramel cream and a salted peanut praline. The label in the case reads Cassaro Peanuts - the house specialty.
How You Order Gelato in Palermo
The basic decision is coppetta or cono - cup or cone. Sicily adds a third way: the brioche col tuppo, a soft bun that the gelato gets stuffed into like a filling; it was probably invented in the east of the island around Catania, but these days they will load one up for you in Palermo too. For anyone raised on a kiosk window where the choice runs vanilla, chocolate or strawberry, thirty tubs make for a serious round of deliberation. Al Cassaro is open until midnight on top of that, so a bad pick can be fixed the same evening with a second visit. In mid-October Palermo can easily still be 25 degrees, so gelato here doesn't end with the season; and if you walk the Cassaro all the way down to the sea, you can stop for tiramisu at Bar Touring on the way back.
Gelato a Minute After Midnight
We picked the first cone at the case in the early evening: dark chocolate with sour cherries in syrup, and the Cassaro peanut specialty. The chocolate was genuinely bitter, not just bitter on the label, the cherries bled sour juice into it, and the peanut tasted like salted peanut butter pulled through caramel. The second cone came a minute after midnight: mango and lemon - the mango thick and ripe, the lemon cleanly sour. The staff spoke almost no English and there were no prices posted anywhere, so we only found out what the gelato cost when we paid. A cone with two flavors cost 2.50 EUR. The fortress the street is named after is long gone. We surrendered that day anyway - twice.
Gelateria Al Cassaro
