On a strip of land kissed throughout the year by a beautiful sun, opens up an endless sea and a few metres from the shore of a small island which remains the centre of legends and memories from the Mediterranean sapour. We are ‘Island of Women’. A small town in the province of Palermo, where every resident will tell you their stories and talk about small boats moored at the port, of the lives of fishermen and above all good fish and good food.
Carlo Magno is a little restaurant located in the square near the harbour. The locals will talk about its good food and if you are lucky, its history. Many wonder: why Carlo Magno? The well-known Emperor of the Middle Ages has an outstanding tradition in the small town; hence the love for the sea, for good food, and why not, for their hard work. They are mixed to the will of those who can build and create, for those who have the right spirit of the leader without suffering the respect from his subjects. And if all this sounds like it really belongs to the realms of the past, you will discover that empires are being built every day.
The story of Antonio Vincenzo Paleggiati, from these shores and adopted. He was a poor waif, the grandmothers will tell you. The child, as always becomes an adult, and it was the case with many young people of the post-war age, that they escaped to a land of hopes. Antonio Vincenzo Paleggiati arrived in California in Monterey County with slightly more than nothing but worked as a deckhand on a fishing boat, engaged in fishing for squid and salmon in the summer.
What then pushes a boy alone in a foreign land to be strong and to build up day after day, their future is the mystery we call the ‘will’. It only knows that the waif will make a career in the new world and that in the years to come he will be found to command the first vessel and provide jobs for many people. Out of nowhere a small empire in short; those who worked for him and with him began to call him “the emperor Carlo Magno.” The reminder of the homeland is perhaps instinct that urges us to escape and at the same time to take root.
Antonio Vincenzo Paleggiati, in fact, returned to Sicily, to his small town, pushed by a sea smell impossible to forget, here and started a family.
The restaurant, built by his nephew Vincenzo Emperor of America, was run by his son Orazio and Francesca.
If it feels like a lost history to you, I recommend you visit this small town, to get to know its people and to admire its sea. Then you can enjoy our specialties cooked with ancient methods and with the love of mother Lidia: pasta with sea urchins or fettuccine with seafood, tasty swordfish, egg and tuna in oil. Rediscover the taste of good fish, the kitchen of those who add secret ingredients passed down from generations and full of history, in the smile of those who serve you at the table, all the flavour of the past and the memories of those who love what they do.
