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

Casa di Flora, Torino, Piedmont

Turin is a rather dour industrial city, we found. Perhaps it was just the autumn greyness, which persisted in the city as it had over the fields we'd crossed by train from Venice. So when, on a dour street in a dour quarter we found our bed and breakfast, it was a pleasant surprise to be greeted by Flora, our distinctly cheery black-haired hostess, and shown to a top floor room that wasn't dour at all.

We'd arrived at the station with no directions to the guest house, just an address, and couldn't understand why the map that we bought from the platform stationers made no sense whatsoever. Nothing was where it should have been. The street we should have stepped onto as we emerged from the station didn't exist. It took several minutes of map turning and head scratching to realise we'd arrived at a different station to the one we were looking at on the map.

Simplest solution was to grab a taxi. The twelve minute journey that followed was probably the most hair raising since we'd screeched around Amalfi coast bends at the hands (well, only one hand on the wheel, the other was used to hold his phone to his ear) of the self-proclaimed Americano. But that's another story. Our Turin driver shot off at a pace, employing an unusual technique of driving in the opposite direction to the bulk of the traffic, which was usually heading straight towards us. Anyway, we reached Via le Chiuse and Casa di Flora in one rather shaken piece. A grinning Flora met us at the front door and showed us up the stairwell of wrought iron balustrades, wooden handrails and blood-red polished plaster to the top floor, and our room. Actually, make that 'apartment'.

Right up in the roof space, with velux windows looking over on the nearby rooftops, the generous room had a full kitchen area (though curiously no cooking pan, crockery or utensils), a sitting area, double bed and a spacious bathroom. Breakfast was cosy and communal, as guests squeezed around the table in Flora's own kitchen while she made tea and coffee.

During our short stay we never did get to grips with the bus and tram system. Thankfully not all the taxis were as manically driven as our first.

By the way, did you know that the T in FIAT stands for Torino?

La Casa di Flora B&B, Via Le Chiuse 85, Torino

Tel 011 4733456

La Casa di Flora

Sagra degli gnocchi, Santa Maria, Monteleone d'Orvieto

This one's a bit different. It's not a hotel or a restaurant, but a tent in a field. And it's only there for a few days a year. It's a sagra, a kind of food festival. All across Italy towns and villages arrange festivals to celebrate a particular food and drink that's either exactly in season or especially good in that region. There are sagre celebrating everything from sardines to wild boar, chestnuts to lemons, and probably things we've never heard of too.

Marta, hostess of the agriturismo we were staying at, explained to us that a neighbouring village was holding a sagra degli gnocchi, and directed us to tiny, workmanlike Santa Maria on a warm summer's evening. We weren't really sure what a gnocchi festival might consist of, but when we arrived at seven the village showed no signs of preparation for it. A few people wandered about, but the streets were empty of stalls or flags or people dressed as potato dumplings, or anything else that might comprise a celebration. Perhaps it kicked off at midnight, we wondered. I imagined a surreptitious moonlit pagan gnocchi-fest in which offerings were made to the great potato god. Or maybe we just had the wrong day, or were in the wrong village.

We were about to leave, disappointedly, when we found it: a sign pointing down a lane leading to a field, at the gate of which two mannequins dressed in rustic costume were seated at a check-clothed table. An English-speaking girl gave us a warm welcome and explained the ropes – order from the menu, pay, keep the ticket and take a seat in the marquee, where our food would be brought to us. We passed a field kitchen in which steam rose from dozens of giant pots, watched over by ranks of ladies from the village, and smoke drifted from barbecues watched over by the men. Inside the giant marquee dozens of trestle tables and benches had been neatly arranged in rows, the end of each table adorned with a carved wooden number decorated with a few ears of wheat. We took our seats at a table near the entrance and waited expectantly. A few other people drifted in, chatting and laughing – couples, families, friends – and a band started to warm up on a stage at the far end of the marquee. The first part of our order arrived: two plastic bowls of steaming gnocchi, plastic glasses and an opened bottle of white wine. Next a paper plate of herb-scented guinea fowl which we ate greedily with our fingers. The band was in full swing now, as more people arrived and took their seats and the marquee was filled with happy chatter and bustling grandmothers, ferrying enormous quantities of food from the steaming, smoking kitchen.

We left as it grew dark, with what remained of our bottle of wine, feeling that we should leave the rest of the sagra to the villagers. And glad that we hadn't given up finding the place.

No website or phone number for the field, of course! But if you ever hear there's a sagra nearby on your Italian travels, try and go. You'll probably enjoy it as much as we did.

Hotel Posta dei Donini, San Martino in Campo, Umbria

At first we hesitated to enter the gates, unsure whether we'd arrived at a hotel or a BMW showroom. The car maker's flags and signage adorned the entrance, and the badges on the cars in the car park were all the same - BMW. Turned out that the hotel had been hosting a training session on the then new 5 series for three months. No mention of that when we booked, of course. We felt a bit like gatecrashers, crunching up the drive in our hired Renault, and in fact for a while we were the only non-BMW technicians staying at the hotel.

Inside was all elegance and calm. The slightly cool reception from the staff and the fact that we were left to carry our own luggage up to our room on the second floor was partly made up for by our room – a spacious junior suite with exposed beams and wooden floors, and lovely furniture and fabrics. Beyond the shutters were wonderful views of the manicured grounds. The bathroom had an alcove bath and a showerhead as big as... well, your head!

Around the deserted pool we had our pick of white cane furniture on which to relax undisturbed as the heady scent of jasmine wafted across the grounds. But the BMW presence seemed to have distracted the staff from attending to its leisure guests. In other words, us. There were no pool towels. The bar was unmanned, until we pointed out to reception that we would quite like a cold drink. The attentiveness couldn't have been greater though when we ate that evening in the hotel restaurant, Panta Gruel. They were all over us like a rash.

The restaurant manager, Luigi, was clearly intent on practising his English and, as we were the only diners, was able to lavish his full and concentrated attention on us. The food and service actually turned out to be very good, if a little too nuova cucina for our peasant tastes. We ate lovely things like steamed asparagus and cheese fondue, maltagliata with rosemary, prawns, tomato and chickpea purée; pork fillet with risina beans (I'd never heard of them either) and warm apple and raisin salad. In small portions on huge plates. You get the idea.

To finish, I wanted to try a particular cheese, sairass, a ricotta seasoned in straw and served with chestnut honey. With a face like he had just kicked a football through the largest window in his neighbour's house, Luigi explained that they had run out. But brilliantly he thought of a way to compensate for this seemingly punishable offence: "I am going to serve you a plate of the most wonderful (strong emphasis on this word) cheeses in all of Italy!" Brave words. A plate arrived, generously groaning with six cheeses, each presented with an appropriate accompaniment, and a clear instruction about the order in which they should be eaten. I could publish a whole formaggio-dedicated blog, but suffice it to say that this was the best cheese plate I've ever tasted, and that the final cheese – one which had spent most of its life buried in the ground, apparently – left me speechless, watery-eyed and defeated, such was its intensity. Luigi shook my hand vigorously as we left the restaurant, impressed I think by my bravery.

I retired, to cheese-fuelled dreams of autobahns and ultimate driving machines.

Hotel Posta dei Donini, Via Deruta 43, 06132 San Martino in Campo, Perugia

Tel 075 609132

Posta dei Donini