Paradise Alcantara

Paradise Alcantara was born in Sicily in 1984 from the passion for the culinary tradition of a local family.

Sara D’Amore and Umberto Platania decide to transform a special place for their family , a countryside located on a promontory overlooking the Alcantara river valley, into a restaurant in which to cultivate their passion for cooking. The choice of the name Paradise viscerally concerns the surrounding area and the spontaneity of the guests who loved to define a paradise as that place surrounded by hills, characterized by natural smells and views, whose view extends as far as the sea.

The menu focused on a selection of traditional local dishes, made with local ingredients . Among these, parmigiana, caponata and macaroni with sauce still stand out today, which, at the time, were handmade by Sara.

In 2006, Sara decided to retire and from that moment Umberto ran the business with his sons Antonio and Rosario, together with a historic collaborator known as Pippo. Since then, Paradise has experienced various moments of transformation thanks to the young contribution of the brothers who respond to the growing demand for uniqueness by offering the customer ever more refinement . Fish-based dishes and some more experimental processes

are introduced , through small contaminations with other cultures, obsolete ingredients for the territory and the refinement of the compositional language. New services are launched: catering , in which the performativity of live cooking is also experimented with, and event planning , in which the design of the displays, the associated services and the compositional details are taken care of. In implementing this last sector, Adele Platania, Umberto’s daughter, joins the team. The location has been expanded and diversified: an outdoor area with an open kitchen and a park with swimming pool , enriched by the beauty of Mediterranean plants, have been added to the historic room with its windows, which have always offered a direct dialogue with the surrounding panorama. and divided into various multifunctional areas. After such an important evolutionary and transformative period, today we are working to experiment with new reasoning through the collaborations consolidated over the years and the new challenges posed by the market, but continuing to rely on the abilities and objectives of the family members who interact with the company, helping it evolve towards distinctive and very different directions. It is precisely thanks to this process of spontaneous belonging that the Paradise Restaurant today becomes Paradise Alcantara: on a hill overlooking the Alcantara Valley, the evolution of a Sicilian family’s passion for cooking, surrounded by the Mediterranean landscape.