Tom Parker Bowles: This 90-year-old Italian restaurateur makes the world's best sorbet and granita

Da Alfredo is a small restaurant that sits on the seafront of Santa Marina on the small Aeolian island of Salina. There’s a large terrace, gazing out over the eternal azure of the Tyrrhenian Sea, towards Lipari and beyond. Alfredo, the eponymous owner, lean and leonine, is now in his nineties and sits in a chair by the door. He is king of all he surveys. You could order pane cunzato, or ‘dressed bread’, that Sicilian open sandwich topped with anything from olive oil and herbs to tuna, anchovies, aubergine and capers. They’re very good indeed, but really, Alfredo is all about the granita, quite possibly the finest you’ll ever taste.

Made fresh every morning from only ice, sugar and various local flavourings, Alfredo’s granite are less watery than other inferior also-rans, less cloyingly sweet, and more intensely, gloriously granular. They crackle and crunch between the teeth, delivering a moment of brain freeze, then a short gasp of shock, before the senses are overwhelmed with pure frosty delight.

In the morning, you could munch your coffee granita piled into a warm, fresh-baked brioche bun, as the locals do. But I like to stop here after a long lunch at Porto Bello, just up the coast in Lingua, and buy at least three different flavours. Always gelsi, or mulberry, made from local berries, stained a deep, dark magenta, the flavour fleeting and subtle. Then lemon, gently tart and splendidly refreshing, and peach, mellow, buxom and heaven scented. The problem is the agony of choice: melon, blood orange and fig, and hell, while I’m here, strawberry and chocolate, too. At Da Alfredo, ice is turned into high art, the sub-zero expression of the fruit’s very soul.

Although the Sicilian granita is a little more coarse than the smoothly refined French sorbet, they’re all part of the same water-ice family, appearing in Europe some time towards the latter half of the 17th century. France, Italy and Spain will all claim ownership, although it seems that China perfected this art, many centuries before. Despite stories to the contrary, however, it most certainly wasn’t Marco Polo, that globe-trotting teller of tall tales, who introduced it back to Venice in the 13th century. Pure culinary myth, albeit a romantic one.

Sorbets and granite are both descendants of the Arabian sherbet, surely one of the most beguiling words in the English language, conjuring up images of fat pashas lying resplendent on silk pillows, their fingers heavy with bejewelled rings, sipping cool sharabs, cold sweetened drinks, under a shady bower, to the tinkle and splash of finely tiled fountains. Served between courses at lavish banquets, they were also sold on the street, carried in giant flasks, held together by leather straps and balanced on the hawker’s shoulders. ‘The flasks glowed with brilliantly seductive colours,’ remembers food writer Claudia Roden of her childhood in Egypt. ‘Soft, pale sugary pink for rosewater; pale green for violet juice; warm, rich, dark tamarind… as they went through the street, the vendors chanted their traditional, irresistible calls of “Arasous” and “Tamarhindi!”, accompanied by the tinkling of little bells, and the clanking of the metal cups which they carried with them.’

Sharabs developed phonetically into sharbat, which, when it entered Italian cuisine, became sorbetto, sorbet in French and Spanish sorbete. Quite when the drinkable ice became the edible sorbet is not clear, but the great Sicilian granita can be both sipped and eaten with a spoon. And although granite are made with only frozen fruit, blended with sugar and water (for a finer texture, use an ice-cream machine), sorbets require the addition of a stabiliser, be it arrowroot, cornflour or locust bean gum powder. That’s what gives the sorbet that all important tight, close texture. The key to both is the very ripest, most fragrant fruit. Even the very finest, however, struggle to match that first bite of Alfredo’s iced magic—but then again, nothing ever does.

Lemon sorbet

This recipe comes from Jacob Kenedy’s Gelupo Gelato, the cookbook from his rather lovely London ice-cream parlour. The sorbet syrup is the base and you can adapt this recipe to any fruit you like, from orange and lime, to blackberry, apricot, melon, peach and pear.

Ingredients

Makes about one litre/15 scoops

For the sorbet syrup (yields 400ml)

125g granulated or caster sugar
Stabiliser: 1 level tspn locust bean gum powder; or 2tbspn starch (arrowroot or cornflour)
225ml water
50g glucose (dextrose) syrup or powder, or light runny honey

For the lemon gelato

250ml freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 5 lemons, depending on juiciness)
80g caster sugar
300ml water

Method

1. To make the sorbet syrup, in a small bowl, stir the sugar and stabiliser powder together thoroughly
2. In a saucepan, heat the water and the glucose or runny honey gently to bring just to the boil
3. Pour the contents of the bowl into the saucepan in a steady stream, stirring all the time with a whisk. Bring back to just boiling, then remove from the heat
4. Leave the syrup to cool until tepid before using. (It will keep for up to a week in the fridge)
5. To make the lemon gelato, blend together the lemon juice, sugar, water and the sorbet syrup. Strain through a sieve into a bowl (discard the contents of the sieve). Transfer the mixture to an ice-cream machine and churn until fully firm
6. Before serving, put the lemon gelato in the freezer for half an hour or so to firm up. If it’s been stored in the freezer for longer and is too firm, allow it to soften in the fridge until scoopable

This feature originally appeared in the April 30, 2025, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe