Antica Focacceria San Francesco, Palermo

It's more than a year since I was in Palermo, yet odd reminders still draw me back. The weather was like it is here now – hot and close, threatening to rain. What made me think of it this morning is the fennel growing in our vegetable garden, now so tall that it waves to me through the kitchen window in the breeze. I ate bucatini with wild fennel and fresh sardines at the Antica Focacceria San Francesco, sitting outside in the shaded piazza. There was a breeze there too, this one warm and scented with the smells of cooking.

So hungry I could eat a horse's head (tacky Godfather reference, sorry), I claimed my outside table for one and ordered mixed antipasti and a portion of caponata to start. Most of what arrived I'd expected. There were arancine (deep fried rice balls filled with ragu), panelle (chickpea fritters), sfincione (a kind of pizza) and cazzilli (potato croquettes). But there was a surprise too, which I hadn't ordered. Pani ca' meusa: a small bread roll filled with boiled veal lungs and spleen, topped with slivers of caciocavallo cheese. Yum. Probably not on McDonald's NPD horizon, but evidently extremely popular in Palermo. And any city that offers veal innards in a bun as its signature dish deserves respect.

In for a cent, in for a euro, I bit into the soft bread and the meat inside. And chewed. The taste was oddly sweet, meaty but sweet, like cow's breath, the texture rubbery. I peeled back the top piece of bread to investigate. The innards were layered in thin slices, and pinkish brown. One piece had a delicately frilly and anatomically detailed pale centre. I closed the bun and chewed some more. As I chewed, I noticed a few people emerging from the Focacceria with serviettes wrapped around buns of their own. Then more people. Theirs were not little buns, like mine, but large ones, the size of saucers, stuffed so generously that the filling oozed out from between the bread. The Big Macs, the Whoppers of Palermo fast food.

Soon almost everyone in the piazza was chewing. And talking. They stood, they walked, they sat on the steps of the church, and they chewed. The Palermitans must have the most exercised jaws in Europe. Next day, wandering around the market, I saw the raw materials of the dish hanging from hooks like wet chamois leathers, and realised why all that chewing was necessary.

Talking of jaws, it would have been nice if the waiting staff at the Antica Focacceria had managed to stretch theirs into some semblance of a smile. Whilst the food here was acceptable, the service was the epitome of Sicilian surliness. Perhaps the fawning attention lavished upon the crisply suited and sun-shaded businessmen on the next table had left them drained, bless them.

Antica Focacceria San Francesco, Via Paternostro Alessandro, 64, 90133 Palermo, Sicily

Tel 091 6090261

Antica Focacceria San Francesco

Tentazioni di Gusto, Trapani, Sicily

I like the way Italians name their restaurants. There's practicality and down-to-earthness at work in a naming convention that often includes the owner, or even previous owner, or grandmother; sometimes refers to its location or an attribute of the place's history; and that usually makes reference to the accepted coding system which only Italians seem really to understand that tells you what kind of establishment it is - osteria, trattoria, ristorante. So a name that translates as Temptations of Taste seems to break with all of that accepted wisdom, and risks sounding a bit tacky. When the B&B owner drew circles on my map of Trapani to indicate good places to eat, he wrote just Gusto, so either he couldn't spell Tentazioni or he felt the name is tacky too. There was nothing tacky about the food though.

It was a hot evening. The clear skies of the day had clouded over thunderously and occasional spots of rain spattered the pavements, threatening to break into a downpour. Gusto (as I prefer to call it) didn't start serving until 8pm, so I spent the previous hour outside a bar within spitting distance, so to speak, of the restaurant, drinking cold beer and watching my fellow drinkers, thinking how different this was from a British pub. Men in smart suits dropped in, presumably after the office and before home, and sipped from cocktail glasses. A beautiful, elegant young woman in an evening dress joined them and drank a glass of wine. Pairs of young girls in jeans sat and sipped coke and coffee, and smoked. Groups of teenage boys gradually swelled in numbers, pulling in more chairs as required, and carrying on earnest and animated conversation. They didn't drink, and as each additional boy arrived, there was much kissing of cheeks. See what I mean about not being like a British pub?

From where I sat I could watch the staff at Gusto lay the tables and set out the chairs in the alley outside the restaurant. Lighting the oil lamps at either end of the alley signalled they were ready to serve, and I sidled up to my table for one. The two dishes that most tickled my fancy on the menu were both pasta. A busiate with wild board ragu, which I ate second, was excellent. The two glasses of wine, white with my first bowl of pasta and red with the busiate, which the waiter had gently but firmly steered me towards, were superb. The service, the knowledgeable explanation of the dishes, the genuine desire that you enjoyed the food, was exemplary. But it was the first bowl of pasta, bucatini with sardines, that was the star. I'd eaten this dish in Palermo, and was impressed. But this rendition was so many notches up it was in a different league. Sardines so fresh you needed your sea legs to eat them just melted in the mouth. Pine nuts and raisins wafted in the Arab world like a breeze across an oasis. Wild fennel lent a heady other-worldliness. I don't usually photograph the food I'm eating (I'd rather just eat it), but on this occasion I couldn't resist recording how simply this dish was presented, compared to how sublime it tasted. Unsurprisingly, every table was filled by the time I left.

So, that name. I still think it's tacky. But maybe there's something about that temptation thing after all.

Tentazioni di Gusto, Via Badia Nuova, 27, 91100 Trapani, Sicily

Tel 0923 548165

Can't find a website of its own. Google probably rejected the tacky name. Doesn't matter - if you're in Trapani, this is where to eat.

Tavernetta Ai Lumi, Trapani, Sicily

I wasn't sure, when I was in western Sicily in the early summer, whether La Mattanza - the ritual tuna slaughter - still existed or had slipped into folklore. I saw no evidence of it in Trapani or on the island of Favignana, where the old tuna processing factories now lie empty. No one seemed to want to talk about it much. I did see an awful lot of fresh tuna for sale though, so someone's catching it.

In Palermo the arrival of a whole tuna at the Ballaro market had been greeted with noisy excitement, as stallholders barked and a crowd gathered to watch the huge fish being butchered into bright red portions. In less than an hour the head and a few bits and pieces were all that remained of the glistening black torpedo. Here in Trapani, the sale of tuna is a more considered, less frenetic affair, perhaps because there's so much of it. In the fish market by the harbour a whole tuna had been neatly portioned and the pieces laid out knowingly, like some mystic arrangement of symbols. The colour of the flesh varied markedly from piece to piece, some almost black, some deep crimson, others bright scarlet, a few as pale as raw chicken. Elsewhere in town every fishmonger displayed their hand drawn cardboard signs advertising tonno locale, all at the same kilo price. On the odd street corner little trucks sold a few pieces of red flesh off slabs of chipped marble, covered by the makeshift shade of an old umbrella. At a stall by the seafront I was cheerfully offered a tuna sandwich: a huge bread roll stuffed with thin slices of cured tuna, a squeeze of lemon and a twist of black pepper. While I waited for it to be assembled the stallholder invited me to taste a thin, dense, dark slice of intense fishiness. Cuore di tonno, he smiled: tuna heart.

So, in a town awash with tuna, it was no surprise to find it on the menu at the tavernetta Ai Lumi. I took a table outside in the early evening. The heat was just going out of the day and the sun had sunk low enough that the pedestrianised street was in full shadow. Lamps were lit and the bars and restaurants were filling. A waiter not unlike Cristiano Ronaldo weaved skillfully between the tables on the wooden terrace, taking orders and brusquely delivering bread and water. I started with something I'd never seen before on an Italian menu, or any other for that matter: fried eggs, salsicce, red onions and pecorino cheese, served in its cooking pan. It was quite tasty. Ronaldo shimmied neatly past the other diners to deliver my main course: the tuna. A thick slice topped with a yellow dollop of sweet and sour onions, and a side of roast potatoes. It was okay, but a tad overcooked, and in truth I was a bit disappointed.

It was dark when I left, nearly ten o'clock, and as I wandered back to my B&B I passed a chap on a street corner selling something off the back of one of those tiny little vans. You've guessed it.

Tavernetta Ai Lumi, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, 75, 91100 Trapani, Sicily

Tel 0923 872 418

Tavernetta Ai Lumi

Ristorante Bar Nuovo Edelweiss, Erice, Sicily

As far as I'm aware, I'm the only paid up member of the mile high arancini club. Okay, eating deep fried crumb-coated balls of rice at altitude may be a bit of a minority sport, but someone has to do it, and it was at the mountainously-named Ristorante Bar Nuovo Edelweiss in Erice that I broke my previous record. Smashed it, actually.

Until then the highest place I'd consumed an arancino was in Ravello, on the Amalfi coast. 350 metres below, past the hairpin bends and the tumble of roofs and lemon groves, the azure sea twinkled. Signor Schiavo at the Caffe Calce on the square twinkled too as he worked his magic with humble rice and breadcrumbs.

The journey to Erice's summit was more of a serendipitous trip than a planned record-breaking attempt. A number 23 bus brings you to the foot of the mountain and a cable car whisks you silently high over scrub and rocks (and the odd villa with swimming pool) to deposit you in deserted Erice. You only have to peer over the edge to know that you're pretty high up. 751 metres high up, to be precise, making Ravello look like a hillock. There are two bars in the tiny central square, and I chose this one. Of course for the sake of research I could have ordered an arancinu (which is what Sicilians call them, apparently) in each bar and compared them. But I judged that would involve wasteful effort, so I ordered two from this same bar, and compared them instead. The first was filled with ragu, rich and slightly spicy. The second contained cheese and peas. Both were encased in crisp golden breadcrumbs and surrounded by soft moist risotto rice. I preferred the first, but it was a close run thing. I congratulated myself on my record breaking achievement with a celebratory ice cold Moretti beer.

The owner of the B&B where I was staying told me that people in Trapani like to visit Erice in the autumn when it is atmospherically gloomy, misty and damp, because there are rumoured to be ghosts roaming the streets. Perhaps it's just high spirits.

Ristorante Bar Nuovo Edelweiss, Piazza S. Domenico, Erice, Sicily 91016

Sorry, no phone or web that I can find, but if you've made it to the piazza you can't miss it.

I Colori del Vento, Trapani, Sicily

Trapani is Sicily's westernmost town. The westernmost point of the westernmost town has an edge-of-the-world feeling: a single road runs along a promontory to a squat stone building, beyond which a few rocks tumble into the clear sea, then nothing but an eye-squinting sky meeting a dark blue horizon. If you were to set sail from here it feels like you would go on forever. You wouldn't of course. Before very long you'd bump into Sardinia to the west or Tunisia to the south west, but it's a romantic idea.

My rooms at the bed and breakfast I Colori del Vento felt a bit end-of-worldly too, in a comfortable sort of way. Staying here on my own for a few nights in an enormous apartment, with two double bedrooms, a sitting room and kitchen and bathroom, I imagined this as a place of anonymity, a place where you could disappear from the world for a long time. Maybe forever. (Well it was hot, and the sun may have heightened my imagination.) The windows of my room, full length and shuttered, looked over the treetops and across the road onto the port, where the ferries between here and Tunisia dock and depart. At night the sounds of mopeds and the shouts of boys and the thud of a football against a wall drifted through the open windows on the warm air, and often the low and steady engine-throb of a ferry at anchor. I settled and relaxed here: felt at home. When I first arrived, late at night, the owner appeared from the darkness to greet me, give me maps, tell me where to eat and offer me a glass of limoncello. All I really wanted was a bed, but I was touched by his concern. When I struggled to open the front door, returning one morning to collect something from my room, one of the young cleaners climbed out of the window to help. And late on the night before I left, when I went upstairs to the owners' rooms to pay, I was offered again the limoncello. This time it would have been impolite, I judged, to refuse.

Not everyone, apparently, agrees with this assessment. I Colori del Vento's reviews on TripAdvisor are at opposing ends of the spectrum: 'five star fantastic' to 'avoid it like the plague'. It's all about expectations, I think, and whether you consider yourself lucky or unlucky to have bagged the 'apartment' on the first floor. I did, and if I ever travel to the edge of the world again, here is where I would stay.

I Colori del Vento, Viale Regina Elena 62, Trapani, Sicily

Tel 347 2504630

I Colori del Vento

Casa del Brodo, Palermo, Sicily

There's something about a table for one in Italy that's an especially lonely experience. Eating is such an important part of Italian social life that to do it alone seems a bit like... well, never mind what it's a bit like. It's not as good as eating in company. You want to share the food, try your partner's, discuss it, compare it, make ecstatic mmm and aah noises about it, and you can't really do those things on your own. There's only one thing worse than eating on your own, and that's eating in a room where everyone else is eating on their own. The silence is deafening.

You don't often see lone Italian diners, but for a while at the beginning of the evening an Italian chap and I were the only people eating in the Casa del Brodo in Palermo, and we spent an uncomfortably hushed half an hour ordering and waiting for our food to arrive. Even the waiting staff seemed embarrassed that their restaurant could only attract a couple of Billy-no-mates.

The place is sub-titled 'dal dottore', a reference to the original chef's broths that were restorative enough to heal the sick. Today it's one of Slow Food's Palermo eating recommendations. Actually I was a bit disappointed and didn't feel terribly restored. I ate a plate of battered fried vegetables that were pretty tasteless. Then maccu di fava - a soup of broad beans and wild fennel that purports to be one of their specials, but didn't taste very special to me. Finally cotoletti di agnello, a platter of grilled lamb cutlets that were, frankly, fatty and tough. My fellow solo diner must have chosen better, as he cleared both of his plates. But I'm prepared to bet that, when sharing the table with a companion, everything would be better: the service would be brighter and even the lamb would be tender. So I'd go again, just not on my own.

This shot of the police has little to do with Casa del Brodo, other than it was taken nearby. And maybe that they were on the lookout for rogue lone diners, in an attempt to banish them from Palermo's streets.

Casa del Brodo, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, 175, Palermo

Tel 091 321655

Casa del Brodo

La Dimora del Genio, Palermo, Sicily

What can I tell you about this guest house on Via Garibaldi, on the edge of the Kalsa district of the city? I can tell you about the most striking, most memorable feature of my three night stay here. The sounds.

My room was on the second floor. The building opposite, like half of Palermo it seemed, was being renovated. Noisily. I got used to it. My window looked down on a little alley, where I watched – and mostly heard – the daily life of a Palermo family. In the little space outside their door they had chairs and a table covered with a patterned oilcloth. A shopping trolley, a stool and a plastic chair. And at least one scooter, though they came and went so frequently it was hard to tell. They might have had four. In this alley the adults met, sat and talked, and the children played hopscotch and dancing. The house next door was derelict, the roof a pile of rubble.

Throughout my time here, noise drifted relentlessly in through my window, like a soundtrack. The clink of hammer on chisel, the tap of hammer on wood. The whirr of a drill. A shrill sound, electrical, intermittent, which I couldn't place. It mingled with the laughter and shouts of the children, and occasional squeal of excitement or delight. A young man using the alley (regularly) to practise his moped riding skills. Shouts of men from one end of the alley to the other, loud and unselfconscious. The lower conversations of men standing on corners, planning... or plotting. Men singing. Women singing. Tap of utensil on pot. A dog barking. The moped again. The odd blast of incredibly loud music. Fireworks that sounded like gunfire.

On my last night here, there was some sort of party. Much talk and laughter, and the children were outside in the warm evening, shouting and playing, until midnight. Suddenly the proceedings were brought to an abrupt conclusion by two loud belches from the men. Followed by complete silence.

I could also tell you that the house is filled with old furniture and the owner's paintings, that the Bangladeshi housekeeper prepares excellent breakfasts and that the signora who owns the place, Paola Mendola, is hardly ever there. It's on the fringe of a fairly gritty part of town, which is fine if you've come to experience the sights – and sounds – of the real Palermo.

That soundtrack is going on even now, I imagine. Wish I could still hear it.

La Dimora del Genio, Via Garibaldi 58, 90133 Palermo

Tel 347 658764

La Dimora del Genio