Il Clandestino, Portonovo

Even in the shade of the forest it was hot. The searing midday sun pumped the resin through the pine trees until it sweated from the needles and the bark and the cones, filling the drowsy air with its soporific bitter-sweetness. Even the birdsong had grown lazy in the heat. The network of dusty tracks through the trees occasionally emerged into secretive coves of dazzling white rock and surf, each presenting a different, slightly surreal little scene. Here a deserted little beach, save for a bicycle which had been propped against a signpost, a small towel draped across the crossbar. No sign of its owner. A ramshackle jumble of boats and trailers, kayaks and sailboards filled the next beach. A man wearing a heavy mask was busy welding, creating flashes and sparks brighter even than the rock. Another, wearing only trunks, his skin tanned to the colour of chestnuts, sanded the fibreglass hull of a dinghy.

In the next cove we came across the appropriately named Il Clandestino; a laid back but acclaimed shushi (sorry, susci) and tapas restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Just a pale blue shack with a few tables and chairs outside, laid bare to the sun. A lone customer, a single man wearing a crisp linen suit and a panama hat sat at one of the tables sipping a glass of ruby red liquid and gazing out to sea. The man who served our drinks now lay on a large flat rock on the beach, apparently asleep. It was like a scene from a Buñuel film. We sipped the drinks we had ordered and felt a little out of place. And very hot, though it seemed uncool to sweat.

We later learned that Il Clandestino is owned by Moreno Cedroni, who holds two Michelin stars. Now if only we'd gone back for dinner...

Il Clandestino, Localita Baia di Portonovo 60100 Ancona

Tel 071 801 422

Il Clandestino

Hotel Emilia, Portonovo

It was all a bit like a James Bond film set. A glistening white building surrounded by green, green lawns dotted with sunloungers and pine trees and oddly industrial sculptures: all overlooking an Indian-Ocean-white beach and a pigment-blue sea. Crickets sang from the lavender bushes. The reception staff were dressed in white too, loose white linen tunics and trousers: they moved slowly, as if performing Tai Chi, and smiled alot, inscrutably. The hall and sitting room were hung with modern art, some of it very good, and large French doors opened onto a shaded terrace of smooth pale stone. Our rooms were all cream carpets and billowing curtains, cane furniture and dark wood floors. I half expected Ursula Andress to pad across the lawns, dagger strapped to her still-dripping thigh.

But, like a film set, it all looked better from a slight distance. Upon closer inspection the whitewashed building showed signs of wear, the cream carpets bore stains of spillage and the staff chose not to venture out from behind their reception desk, leaving us to haul our own luggage to our rooms. The art, on the other hand, remained as good close up as it was from across the room.

We spent a happy couple of nights here though, lounging in the gardens and around the pool, sipping cold beer beneath a shady arbour. We took dinner one night, outside on the terrace. Earlier in the day, when we asked to see menus, one of the floaty-linen reception staff felt it necessary to point out that the portions were small: an odd way to entice diners. Perhaps she thought we were gluttons. We were served fish that was overcooked and vegetables that were tasteless, so in the event we were grateful for the small portions. And whilst we ate we knew, could even faintly hear, that down the road in the bay people were eating the freshest of seafood, in the most garlicky, fishy liquor or the crispest of batters, looking out over the inkiest of seas.

But you can't have everything. And taking coffee in Emilia's gardens, with the breeze from the Adriatic wafting over the cliff and the sculptures looming vaguely in the darkness, was very pleasant; until it was too chill, and we moved into the living room: in the dimmed light the paintings took on a different quality. The strange filmset feeling returned. I might have ordered a martini, but I worried it might be stirred rather than shaken...

Hotel Emilia, Collina di Portonovo 149/a, 60129 Ancona

Tel 071 801117

Hotel Emilia

Da Anna, Portonovo

Before we discovered Marcello's, we found Da Anna amongst the scattering of wooden buildings that line the shore around the bay. Further on towards the headland are smaller, scruffier boathouses and fisherman's huts. But this is the restaurant quarter of the beach. Da Anna is painted powder blue beneath an asbestos roof, with troughs of oleander below its windows. The lovely Anna takes things at a measured pace. In the late afternoon a man carefully raked the fine pebbles of the beach outside the restaurant, and tended to the parasols. At seven in the evening, as the shadows of the parasols lengthened across the shingle, the mainly Chinese staff sat outside the restaurant in what was left of the evening sunshine, eating. At seven thirty they were talking and smoking. At eight they unhurriedly began to open the restaurant, and we were the first eager diners through the door and into the vaguely nautical dining room.

First, garlicky, winey, chilli-spiced vongole, then crisply rustling fritto misto. You can judge a lot from a restaurant's fritto misto. The batter should be thin, crisp and very light; the misto may be squid, octopus, tiny fish, but all must be spankingly fresh. There may be courgette too. The fried morsels should leave hardly a trace of oil on the greaseproof paper and no aftertaste in the mouth. And there must be salt, and lemon; in quantity. Nothing else is needed. Like fish and chips, it's best eaten directly out of the paper. In Venice we ate a slightly sad version, served with salad. In Amalfi a better one, mainly of octopus. The very best exposition we've enjoyed is a few steps up the beach from Da Anna, at Il Laghetto, but this came a close second.

Down to earth, prompt service from a slightly swarthy waiter kept the place up to speed with the seemingly endless stream of customers that poured through the door like the tide had come in. Here a young couple gazing into each other's eyes. There a family with a young baby. Over there two young chaps who ate their pasta more quickly than anyone I've ever seen (apart perhaps from Alessio Villa's father in Assisi). At intervals an increasingly sweaty Chinese head would appear from around the kitchen door to check progress then disappear back into the kitchen, no doubt to report that the deluge continued.

As we left Da Anna, more diners squeezed past us through the door and yet more waited outside, good-humouredly, in the now chilly dark. The tide was still coming in.

Trattoria Da Anna, Via Portonovo, 60020, Ancona

Tel 071 801 343

No sign of a website I'm afraid. You'll just have to wander along the beach until you find it.

Caffé Meletti, Ascoli Piceno, Marche

Most Italian towns, it seems, have a culinary claim to fame. Nestling in the shadow of the Sibillini mountains, the town of Ascoli Piceno has two: its large olives, stuffed with meat, breaded and deep fried (olive all'Ascolana) and its anisetta, a clear, aniseed-tasting digestif, best enjoyed sitting on the terrace of the grand Caffé Meletti, overlooking the pastel-stoned Piazza di Popoli. Not to disappoint the Ascolians, we tried both.

At a canopied stall at the edge of the square we bought a plentiful paper cone-full of olives and one of suppli di riso to eat as we wandered. The olives were salty and strong, with a crisp coating of fine crumbs. The suppli, crunchy and subtly cheesy. Street food of quite a refined nature.

From our vantage point on the Meletti's terrace we sipped anisetta (and dusted off the crumbs) as we watched a scene that, in essence, has probably not changed for hundreds of years – a piazza polished smooth by a million footsteps. Caffé Meletti is one of those Italian institutions that's oddly out of proportion to its location. Inside, its polished wood and brass and tiles seem more in keeping with a cosmopolitan city than a mountain town. I can't help wondering how, before tourism touched here, it was sufficiently frequented to stay in business. Maybe the locals drank a lot of anisetta?

I would, if I lived here. It would help to wash down all those olives.

Caffé Meletti, via del Trivio n. 56, 63100 Ascoli Piceno

Tel 0736-255559

Caffé Meletti, Ascoli Piceno

Il Laghetto (Marcello's), Portonovo, Marche

The Italians have a saying, apparently, that restaurants with views only serve food fit for dogs. Sounds to me like a rumour started by the owners of restaurants with no view. This place unequivocally dispels the myth.

No more, really, than a shack on the beach (quite a smart shack, though), Il Laghetto assumes pride of place on the curved bay of Portonovo. The name means little lake, after the tiny lagoon behind the beach that hosts night-time frog croaking contests. Locally, it's simply Marcello's.

We've eaten here a handful of times. The first time was delicious chaos. We hadn't booked, but just managed to bag a table by the bar. The restaurant was packed, heaving, the waiters sweating as food was delivered by the bucketload from the kitchen. The noise was deafening, the atmosphere electric. We didn't really order, but left ourselves in the hands of our 100-mile-an-hour waiter, who brought us dish after dish. Mussels, polenta, clams, razor clams, sea snails, prawn risotto, fritto misto... it just kept coming. And it was very, very good.

It was all calmer, and most memorable, when we returned to celebrate our wedding anniversary. The table waiting for us directly on the beach was laid as crisply as in any fine restaurant dining room. In the curve of the bay, a handful of boats had moored for the evening and at another of the restaurants along the shore, as dusk fell, a guitarist started to play gentle jazz. Our waiter invited us to enjoy the view, but we had already taken the liberty.

We ordered souté di vongole and pesce azzuro and rombo – a whole grilled turbot between the two of us. Wine was placed in an ice bucket, its feet secured in the shail. A plate of tiny whole fish, lightly dusted with flour and fried to a crisp, was placed before us. The pesce azzuro, our waiter exlained, should be eaten with the fingers, no cutlery, and whilst piping hot. Scottaditto. He made burned fingers gestures, blowing onto his hands, to emphasise his point. Prizing the tiny backbones from the fish, we sucked on their salty, lemony flesh, leaving neat little piles of bones on the sides of our plates. Next a heavy copper pan, hot from the hob and rattling with glistening clam shells bathed in a garlicky liquor which dribbled down our chins and clung to our fingers. Then the turbot was skillfully filleted at the table and its sweet white flesh served to us simply with roast potatoes (but what roast potatoes!)

That night Italy were playing the USA in the first round of the World Cup. A TV inside the restaurant showed the game. It was dark when Italy scored their first (and only) goal in the match, raising a cheer from inside the restaurants along the beach and signalling the lamplit boats in the bay to sound their dull foghorns.

Il Laghetto, Portonovo di Ancona

Tel 071 801183

Il Laghetto, Portonovo

Fortino Napoleonico, Portonovo, Marche

The first glimpse through the trees that line the coast road high above the Baia di Portonovo is breathtaking. A densely wooded hill drops to a sweeping cove where a brilliantly white shoreline curves around an azure bay. It might just as well be the Caribbean as the eastern coast of Italy. Did Napoleon find this view stunning too, or simply strategically important? I wonder, because it is here that in 1811 he built a fort to defend this stretch of the Adriatic coast and to prevent the British from coming ashore to draw fresh water from the lagoon which lies just back from the beach. Crafty chap, Napoleon. But I doubt he'd have imagined that this garrison of six hundred men would one day be a stylish hotel and a fine base for a few nights, or longer, on the part of the Marche coast known as the Riviera del Conero, just a half hour drive from Ancona.

Built in a contrasting mix of terracotta brick and dazzling white stone, plundered from a nearby convent apparently, the single story fort sits solid and squat just a step from the sea, on a small headland dividing two bays. A sense of history pervades the place. The perimeter structure which houses the bedrooms surrounds a sunny courtyard in which breakfast can be taken in fair weather. It's not hard to imagine it once filled with drilling soldiers. The hotel's lofty restaurant was once the officers' quarters. What must once have been a lookout platform is now a blustery al fresco terrace. The same reason that attracted Napoleon – the uninterrupted view – now attracts newlyweds to hold their receptions here.

We splashed out on a suite – cool stone floors, enormous bed, leather sofa, lovely bathroom. Two narrow slits of windows, still with their original lead frames, pierced the two-foot thick walls and squinted over the Adriatic, which lapped at the walls below. At night, the open windows sucked in the sound and smell of the sea.

Portonovo is little more than a sleepy scattering of restaurants and bars strung together by a network of dusty tracks through the trees. Occasionally they emerge into coves of dazzlingly white rock and surf. But the sleepiness is shrugged off on summer weekends and during the Italian holidays, as the beach and the restaurants become packed and the only road in and out is jammed. (A bonus though is the porchetta van that sets out its stall at the top of the cliff!) Come Monday, it's all quiet again.

Service at the hotel was attentive but discreet. Breakfast was plentiful and good. We didn't eat dinner here (though the food is reputedly good), but headed for the fish restaurants strung out along the beach, a stroll away, and weren't disappointed. Wandering back to the hotel one evening in the warm blackness, the woods that line the path to the Fortino sparkled with tiny points of light. At first we thought the hotel had strung fairy lights through the trees.

Then we saw that they moved, and realised that they were fireflies.

Fortino Napoleonico, 60129 Portonovo (AN)

Tel 071 801 450 51

Hotel Fortino Napoleonico