Domus - Modica Bassa - Review

Today's lunch has been a firm favourite of mine for a while but was the first time Totó has visited Domus in Modica Bassa. I have been many times with friends and family and have yet to have anything less than fantastic experiences in the dining room. Domus opened some months ago, I was pleased to hear that the former chef of a restaurant I had once regularly frequented (but had gone downhill since his departure) had opened a place of his own. The Venezuelan family who own and run the restaurant have never failed to be anything other than extremely accommodating and hospitable and the food has always been of the highest quality. We are very fortunate in Modica, in that we have a plethora of fine places to eat but Domus offers something quite different to the other places in town.

Situated close to San Pietro on Modica's main street, Corso Umberto, Domus is a rather small but subtly elegant restaurant decorated in brilliant white and has a small outside eating space for the summer months.

The restaurant always serves warm, fresh home baked bread in various flavours, today we were treated to foccacia baked with rosmary, bread with porcini mushrooms, mini dough balls and bread with cumin and dried fruit. We ordered an appetiser of calamari served with puréed potatoes, it wasn't the first time I had had this dish and, as it has always been previously, it was delicately flavoured and just enough to whet the appetite.

For our main course, we both opted for grilled sword fish, served with prawns and (more) calamari with a side order of potatoes baked with paprika. It is precisely this type of main course which makes Domus different to the other places to eat in town,

it is less wholesome, traditional Sicilian food and more of an exoticly spiced, experimental dining experience. The huge slab of sword fish was cooked to perfection and the large prawns and calamari offered something tantalisingly tasty in between mouthfuls of the main part of the meal. Served with a tomato salsa and a creamy dip, the spicy paprika potatoes were just the perfect accompaniment to this lovely main course.

We usually opt for Sicilian wines but today we decided to go for a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc on the recommendation of our host. Los Vascos is a sharp tasting white that was able to cut through the spices and various fishy tastes perfectly. A great choice to go with our meal and a wine we will both endeavour to drink again in the future.

No dessert at the restaurant today, as I was a good little Sicilian girl this morning and popped out to a pasticceria for us to have something sweet once we returned home. That said, I have had dessert a number of times at the restaurant before and can highly recommend the chocolate fondant or the raspberry and prosecco jelly. My fellow ex-pat and former colleague Lucy and I have regularly talked each other into having a dessert here and marvelled at how cheap the bill would be in light of the quality of food we had experienced... if this restaurant were in our native England, neither of us would be able to afford to eat there, we are talking serious quality for a very low cost.

Very highly recommended for anyone visiting Modica, I will probably see you there!

Domus Restaurant and Grill
Corso Umberto I, 156, Modica RG

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Domus-modica-food/470829306382743