Chef Maria Calato’s grandmother added saffron to her pasta with sardines. She called it “a la milanisa,” a reference to the ingredient’s Milanese roots. For Calato, who grew up watching her grandmother work her way around a kitchen, that small addition became part of the dish’s identity. Years later, after working in acclaimed kitchens in London and Milan, she still considers it integral to her cooking.
At Semente, the restaurant at Susafa in Sicily’s Madonie countryside, Calato cooks linguine in a liquid sauce of sardines and wild fennel, strained and reduced to concentrate its flavor. The preparation is her own creation, but its roots represent a piece of her past. “It reminds me of my grandmother and allows me to keep a little part of her cooking alive,” she says.
A recipe can preserve things that are sometimes difficult to put into words: someone’s judgment about how much to add, a familiar fragrance, the memory of standing close to watch, taking it all in and remembering how it felt to be there. In Calato’s kitchen, those early lessons have survived an international career and a return to the place where she first worked professionally.
That place was Susafa.
Five generations and one new chapter
Calato's homecoming is one of several stories unfolding at this former farmhouse, where five generations of the Saeli-Rizzuto family have owned and farmed the land. Today, its agricultural buildings welcome visitors into Sicily’s magical and less-traveled interior, among the hills of the Madonie. Its 18 rooms and suites sit among gardens, a swimming pool overlooking the countryside and sunset views that feel unparalleled, even in Sicily.
Susafa earned one Michelin Key in 2024 and retained the key in 2025. It belongs to the Virtuoso luxury hotel portfolio and is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, whose Considerate Collection recognizes its environmental practices and cultural preservation.
But understanding what makes the estate so affecting requires spending time with the people responsible for it. For owner Manfredi Rizzuto, Susafa comes with an inheritance that extends well beyond its buildings. He began developing the hospitality project in 2008, transitioning a working family property into a new era. Its past remains visible in the beautiful spaces guests now inhabit. Semente occupies the old granary, where local stone walls, Sicilian terracotta floors and a large fireplace warm the moody dining room. Grain once stored here is now the focus of many menu items, in a room that celebrates the ingredients that define the property.
Chef Calato’s presence, ideas and commitment give it all a meaning that is felt immediately. Susafa was her first workplace, the setting for the earliest steps of a career that would take her to Core by Clare Smyth in London and Michelin-starred restaurant Andrea Aprea in Milan. Those kitchens expanded her technique and her understanding of what an ingredient could become.
“In many ways, it is like coming full circle, bringing back everything I have learned along the way,” Calato says.
A homecoming in the kitchen
There is a particular vulnerability in returning to a place you knew at the beginning of your career. Familiar surroundings can make the distance traveled more apparent. For Calato, Semente offers both the reassurance of a homecoming and the freedom to cook with the perspective she gained elsewhere.
Her earliest ambition, though, began at home. As a child, she watched her grandmother transform simple ingredients into food that seemed almost impossible. She wanted to understand how it happened, then recreate it herself.
That curiosity still guides her, and Susafa’s gardens provide the starting point. She takes what is ready to harvest and explores its possibilities, allowing the ingredient to lead her toward an idea and a dish. Autumn brings pumpkins, whose versatility particularly appeals to her. Wild fennel finds its way into sauces and an infused olive oil that finishes a cold-weather minestrone.
The work is dependent on what is growing, what tastes right that day and on what the land can reasonably give. “My goal is to create dishes that feel deeply connected to this place — something that could exist nowhere else,” she says.
Bread and olive oil establish that connection at the beginning of a meal. The menu calls the pairing “Custodi,” or custodians, bringing together bread from the farm and oil from its grove. Calato infuses biancolilla olive oil with tomato and oregano, pairing it with homemade bread made from Susafa’s grains and finishing it with anchovy powder. The flavors are reminiscent of pane cunzato, Sicily’s seasoned bread. Behind the pass, Calato turns what other kitchens might discard into something of a masterpiece.
Tomato tartare comes with roasted tomato purée, basil and crisp pieces of pecorino rind. Yesterday’s bread becomes its sauce. The dish offers a graceful expression of thrift, giving ingredients another purpose while making dinner more interesting.
What the farm can teach the hotel
Susafa also speaks to something owner Rizzuto finds increasingly difficult to ignore. His ancestors, he points out, generated little of what would now be considered garbage. Materials were natural, waste largely organic. Contemporary comfort has brought a different set of consequences, and running a hotel means confronting them daily.
Susafa grows food, produces energy and draws water from its own source. Yet Rizzuto is wary of treating sustainability as a problem solved. “The very hard part is to find the right balance between our expectation, the modern expectation, and what is actually sustainable,” he says.
Guests arrive seeking the quaint countryside along with the comforts expected of a five-star resort. Rizzuto understands both desires. He also wonders what might happen if those expectations shifted. He has imagined an experience without electricity, allowing guests to step further into the way the estate once functioned. It remains an idea rather than a commitment, part of an ongoing argument he has with himself about how to move Susafa forward. The uncertainty weighs heavy on his mind. He is still considering what the farm might teach the hotel.
In Calato’s kitchen, that exchange is familiar. Maiorca wheat is cooked risotto-style with zucchini and prawns, finished with lemon zest. At dessert, cuccìa brings the grain back in pralined form alongside sheep’s-milk ricotta mousse, candied orange and orange gel. Toasted Tumminia wheat gelato completes the tasting menu.
The wheat takes on different textures and roles, keeping the estate’s agricultural life close to the table. Calato’s pasta classes let guests participate in that relationship. Learning from the chef adds another dimension to eating her food, making the stay an opportunity to take some knowledge home. The lesson continues a practice central to her own life: someone who knows how to cook is sharing that knowledge with someone eager to learn.
Beyond the kitchen, the countryside gives something back to her, too. “The adrenaline of a busy service can give way to a quiet walk through the fields, with nothing but birdsong in the background. That connection with nature helps me slow down, find balance, and return to the kitchen with a fresh perspective,” Calato says.
Something worth carrying forward
For Rizzuto, looking back sometimes brings an unexpected measure of humility. His great-grandmother, whom he never met, survives in family stories as an extraordinary cook with exacting standards. Her attention extended from food to bed linen and the objects arranged on a table. Imagining her at Susafa today, he suspects she might find some of its standards subpar.
It’s an affectionate admission from the owner of a luxury hotel. It also reveals how seriously he takes the people who came before him. Their lives were harder in many ways, and their knowledge still has value.
At Susafa, inheritance comes with decisions. Calato chooses to keep her grandmother’s saffron and Rizzuto questions which expectations the estate should accommodate and which it might encourage guests to reconsider. Both are working out how to carry something precious forward.
The answers emerge, although gradually, through Calato’s cooking and Rizzuto’s care for the farm, each sharing something of their own grandparents' past that they want the next generation to feel.
Susafa, Contrada Susafa, 90028 Polizzi Generosa, Palermo, Sicily, Italy
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