Where should I eat in Catania, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

Catania eats on its feet before it sits down. The sacred breakfast is granita con brioche: a Sicilian granita — almond, lemon, coffee or mulberry (gelsi) — spooned and scooped with a brioche col tuppo, the soft bun wearing its little knot "cap," torn and dunked. The canonical counter is Pasticceria Savia, on Via Etnea facing the Villa Bellini since 1897, where the same counter serves the city's other morning monument: the arancino. Say it with an o — in eastern Sicily the fried rice ball is masculine, arancino, and in Catania it wears a conical, Etna-like point; the classic fillings are al ragù and al burro (ham and béchamel), and the city's pasticcerie compete on its crispness. Savia and its rival Spinella, a few doors up Via Etnea, anchor the pastry aristocracy; the cipollina — flaky pastry wrapped around ham, mozzarella, tomato and onion — is the local bake to add to the tray.

Midday belongs to the market. La Pescheria's fringe is lined with trattorie and raw-fish bars cooking what the stalls sell — Osteria Antica Marina, inside the market itself, is the address every Catanian names for a fish lunch among the crates — and the kiosk culture takes over between meals: Catania's chioschi, the little Liberty-era refreshment kiosks on its squares, pour the city's own soft drinks, above all seltz limone e sale — sparkling water, fresh lemon juice and a pinch of salt, shockingly restorative in the heat — and variations with tamarind or mandarin syrups. By late afternoon the rotisseries turn out scacciata, the stuffed flatbread of tuma cheese with broccoli or cauliflower (a Christmas-season classic now sold year-round).

The boldest local table is the horse-meat strip of Via Plebiscito, where grill houses have cooked carne di cavallo for generations: horse steaks and polpette di cavallo (meatballs), grilled over coals and eaten with nothing but lemon and a roll at smoky counters. It is Catania's working-class emblem — cheap, superb and non-negotiable in local identity; the squeamish can order the same kitchens' chicken and nobody minds. For wine with all of it, drink the volcano: Etna DOC wines — the reds of Nerello Mascalese and whites of Carricante, grown on lava terraces up to 3,280 feet (1,000 m) in one of Sicily's first DOCs (1968) — pour in every serious enoteca in the center, and their mineral snap is the taste of the mountain with food.

Pescheria at 8 a.m.: a swordfish head standing sentry on the ice, purple octopus coiling in a basin, the vendor's cry of prices like a song, and the coffee bars behind already lining up the first granite of the day.

Order your granita the Catanian way: granita is breakfast, not dessert, and the correct dip is the brioche's tuppo torn off first. The other counter instinct to copy is the seltz: when a Catanian orders "un seltz completo" at a chiosco, the kiosk keeper builds a small ceremony of syrup, soda, lemon and salt whose formula varies by kiosk and is defended like a family recipe — ask yours what their house version is, and you will get the recipe and the argument for it.

• Granita before nine — Savia at opening, at the marble counter: granita di mandorla, brioche col tuppo, an arancino for the road
• Lunch inside the market — Eat where the fish lands: a Pescheria trattoria at 1 p.m., when the stalls begin folding
• Plebiscito after dark — The horse grills fire up in the evening; go at 8 with an appetite and no plans to sit long

The Pescheria closes Sundays and its trattorie follow the market's rhythm — a Sunday fish lunch needs a different quarter (try the port-side and the Aci villages up the coast). Peak summer heat moves Catanian appetites late and light: restaurants fill at 9 p.m. and the midday meal shrinks to granita. Horse meat is not a joke or a dare here but it is also not everywhere — outside Via Plebiscito's strip it is a butcher's specialty, not a menu line.

Start tomorrow at Savia's counter, put Osteria Antica Marina on the market morning, and save one evening for Plebiscito's smoke — the city's edible short course.