Leonardo Sciascia, an Italian writer born in Recalmuto in the province of Palermo, used to meet up with Gesualdo Bufalino, an illustrious poet, in a small shop in Modica near the De’ Barbieri staircase.
Sitting opposite each other, Sciascia said, as he enjoyed a delicious piece of chocolate: “I’m familiar with this, I tried it a long time ago in a small pueblo (village) near Alicante”.
In 1983, again talking about chocolate from Modica, he said: “Another lure of gluttony… is two-fold: vanilla and cinnamon, eaten in chunks or melted in cups.
Unmatched in flavour, so that those who taste it believe they have found the epitome, the absolute (those who taste it seem to have reached something exceptional) and that chocolate produced elsewhere – albeit the most celebrated – is adulteration, corruption (an imitation of the real chocolate of Modica)”.
