Da Clà

Ambiance and views: 5
Food: 4
Service: 3
My family and I were staying at the Marina Holiday Hotel and Spa in Balestrate, Sicily and while searching for places to eat, we saw that Da Clà was highly rated and located right under our noses, in fact! Da Clà is actually located on the covered patio of Marina Holiday Hotel and Spa so just a quick skip down from our hotel room for our family of 7 dinner. We must have been the first ones because no one was there but we were immediately greeted and sat down by Claudio Palazzolo, the owner. I would like to add that later on, there was a wedding held a few steps away so it was a bit lively when we left but kind of weird this «restaurant» was more like a reserved space on the hotel patio. I immediately embraced the mismatched table settings giving a touch of home and laidback to tone down the pretention of something it’s not (reserved space on a hotel patio). Think Shabby chic! If anything the stunning views of the Sicilian sunset on the Gulf of Castellamare is just lovely and bound to take your breath away. Our waiter comes over and we order a few bottles of water and Nero d’Avola wine to enjoy all that Sicily has to offer.
Da Cla claims to use only high quality ingredients presented in a haute cuisine fashion. Their menu is made up of dishes that displaying the flavors of Sicily in a rather modern way while honoring tradition. We wanted to try a bunch of things and discussed eating «Family style» to which the waiter overheard and could not comprehend the concept until Claudio suggested a «tasting» menu where we would pick a few dishes so everyone could taste. Not seeing anything on the menu about a fixed or traditional tasting menu, per se, we said yes, hoping he would lead us in the right direction. Either there was a language barrier or mismatched interpretation, the execution was not quite what we had in mind but we go along with it nonetheless because we are on holiday and for that I think back that they had taken advantage of that.
We ordered multiple dishes of the following:
Tonno Rosso di Castellammare… fresh caught red tuna served a top a tower of avocado and baby cress with Caviar Calvisius. Delicious!
Homemade Black Tagliolino pasta with summer truffle and cloak of sea bass… Now while I advise against ordering pasta in the states due to it being overpriced and underrated, I give it a go while in Italy because duh. This dish, wow. Now while the pasta was a bit overcooked and on the softer side, the truffle sauce was AH-​MAZING. No lie, we seriously ordered like four of these dishes and it was my favorite of everything we ordered.
Spaghettone with clams and bottarga. Pretty delish, pasta bit more al dente so consistency of cooked pasta a bit lost but clams were fresh and quite tasty.
Ravioli di Bufala Campana DOP raw shrimp and salmon caviar. Mozzarella di Bufala was amazing in this and quite an interesting interpretation of ravioli.
Fish of the day– skate that was caught that day.
Black Angus Argentino reduction Triskelè with cherry and potato gratin. Small cut of black angus beef severely overcooked (we requested rare and it came out well done, no pink) so I would suggest sticking to fish and pasta dishes if you dined here unless you love well done meat. This was my least liked dish.
For dessert, multiple dishes:
Ball of chocolate mousse with almond toffee sauce. Quite good but I much preferred the Creamy pistachio tiles with passion fruit in comparison. I really loved the sweetness and tart of the passion fruit balance the creaminess and nutty flavor of the pistachio. Family of 7 going straight out HAM at Da Clà prompted Sergio to carted out some apertifs to choose from, we chose grappa and amaretto for toast to a delicious meal!
While I left a fan, my family was not the most gung ho on the place and that broke my heart for even suggesting to come here. They felt we were taken advantage of for money. While the staff suggested a tasting, we would have been better off just ordering several dishes ON THEIR OWN, asking for plates to share and eat. For some reason, this was a strange and hard concept to comprehend in Italy. Not only would it have been cheaper, but we wouldn’t have left hungry because while food is on the expensive side, the portions are small. What bothered them most were the ambiguous «Da Clà charge”(s) on our check which was a bit shady to say the least. Also my father had requested cold water rather than the water sitting out in the 90something degree heat and brought out measly glass of ice while he watched other diners receive buckets of ice for their water while we received none. I wish my father would have spoke up for whatever reason he didn’t but he spent quite a bit of money on dinner plus tipped generously for Italian standards and didn’t want to make a thing of it I guess. For the amount of money he dished out, he should have at least gotten a damn bucket of ice at the bare minimum but don’t expect no favors.