Sicily unslanted
Dave Lee and two teenage tasters prepare for their forthcoming family holiday in Italy by visiting Santi’s on Princes Avenue in Hull, with doggy bags and language lessons at the ready.
IF you will, cast your mind all the way back to the heady days of April 2022. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is over a month old, the energy price cap goes up 54 per cent and Boris Johnson is issued a Partygate fine for boozing his way through the pandemic. Those were the days, eh? Never a dull moment. So seemingly recent, yet so very far away.
That April was also when I reviewed a marvellous little Sicilian eatery in Hull called Mancia that had recently opened and was doing a cracking trade. Since then, the owner/chef of Mancia – Angelo Romano, whose debut restaurant that was – has opened the first branch of Santi’s in nearby Anlaby and now his second outlet back in Hull, on the once-bustling Princes Avenue. He’s opened as many restaurants since April 2022 as the country has had Prime Ministers.
The second iteration of Santi’s is a relatively intimate affair, just one room with a small-ish kitchen and bar. The decor has been heavily Italicised (meaning “made to look Italian”, rather than “leaning to the right”) and business is breezily brisk, with families and couples arriving hungry and leaving full at a noticeably smart rate. While Angelo is beavering away in the kitchen, his cousin Elisa holds court out front. A fine hostess she makes, as well. Heavily-accented and not short of opinions, she keeps glasses full and everyone on track while simultaneously teaching my kids how to speak Italian like a natural-born Sicilian.
For it’s my kids I’ve brought with me for their opinion of Santi’s, experts as they (think they) are on Italian cuisine.
Typically for a brace of teenagers, though, their entire report of the dishes they sample can be written on a postage stamp. “Best lasagne I’ve ever had” and “that pizza is ace” is alI I manage to squeeze out of them. Time for dad to fill in the blanks. The cuisine at Santi’s is distinctly and proudly Sicilian. Simple, robust cooking; strong flavours and minimum ingredients. All the usual Italian favourites are accounted for but you’re left in no doubt that they come from the south, where life and cooking is slower and more elementary. Manzo di vino is a great example of what Santi’s does very well. Slow cooked ox cheek with porcini-laced potato puree and a deep, rich, sweet gravy that includes grated chocolate. Probably only four or five ingredients combined and cooked to perfection.
Similarly, braesola con pecorino polenta features less than a dozen elements. It is pine nuts and sultanas rolled in cuts of beef served on a bed of polenta with just enough light tomato sauce and plenty of grated pecorino. You can imagine it being served in a family trattoria on a hillside above Catania. People often shy away from polenta as it’s seen as a bland mush but, when used effectively, it’s a superb vehicle for flavours that can define or supplement a dish. Here, it has a gravy kind of taste, making the dish feel homely.
Two favourite dishes from Mancia have survived the journey to Santi’s. Panelle are triangular chickpea fritters served with nduja and stracciatella. I actually prefer them the day after (doggy bags are available and much needed, such are the portion sizes) when they have softened up a bit.
And there is usually a choice of freshly made arancini. The size of a cricket ball, stuffed with fluffy, fragrant rice and – on this occasion – with chorizo and mozzarella at the molten core. They’re enough for a filling lunch on their own. While the aforementioned lasagne and pizza are being noisily devoured around the table, I go for fagioli bianchi, which is a bean broth made with tomatoes, rosemary, flaked almonds, parmesan and pangrattato, or flavoured breadcrumbs. It’s served with mafaldine pasta, which is the one like a wider fettuccini with pleated edges. There’s just enough wet stuff to perfectly coat the pasta and it becomes the second dish of the evening that I fail to finish. The portion sizes at Santi’s are very generous, so be aware when ordering.
Desserts change constantly but would appear to be staunchly traditional. We enjoy a
tiramisu (an unnecessarily large portion), a cannoli (freshly made that day, with a distinctly pistachio-ish tinge and a camp 1970s glacé cherry stuck in the end) and a sweet and sharp Sicilian lemon cheesecake which reminds you that lemons are utterly different in Italy. All are excellent and merrily forced into our mouths despite there being a small pile of doggy bags on the table attesting to our overstuffedness.
We leave Santi’s having spent less than anticipated, with happy faces and dangerously distended innards. As we go, I check the opening times and find we can return any day of the week from breakfast until late evening. It may be an admirable goal to offer service so universal but I can’t help but think it’s, at best, optimistic and, at worst, insane to think enough punters will turn up to make this schedule worthwhile.
Prinny Ave, sadly, is no longer the culinary hotspot it was only five years ago, something the general economic atmosphere of the times only makes that more pronounced. I hope such long opening hours work for Santi’s but it seems extremely unlikely.
Me and the kids are in a unique position at the moment, as we’re finally about to take the break we had planned to Naples, Pompeii and around the Amalfi Coast that we were forced to cancel when Covid lockdowns first kicked in. While we’ll be enjoying the best local food we can find, we’ll be able to compare it directly to that which we enjoyed in Santi’s last week. So good and so traditional is the food Angelo Romano and his team serve up, I honestly expect it to stand the comparison with much aplomb.