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

Madeira's signature dish performs: espetada — chunks of beef rubbed with garlic, salt and bay, threaded on a skewer cut from the laurel tree itself and grilled over embers, then hung from a stand at your table to be knocked onto the plate. The espetada heartland is the south coast's working villages: O Lagar and Vila da Carne in Câmara de Lobos, and the local institution O Polar in Funchal, where the skewers arrive with milho frito (crisp cubes of fried cornmeal), salad and bolo do caco — the island's sweet-potato flatbread, baked on a hot stone (the caco) and split to melt garlic butter, served at every meal and sold from street stalls in Funchal's old town. Câmara de Lobos, the fishing port 15 minutes west of the capital, is the food pilgrimage in itself: Churchill painted its bay in 1950, the espada boats land there, and the bars pour the island's two drinks (below).

The fish is a monster turned delicacy: the black scabbardfish (espada preta), a ribbon of teeth hauled from depths of 3,000 feet or more off Madeira — one of the world's deepest commercial fisheries, worked by Câmara de Lobos longliners for two centuries — filleted and fried in batter, then served with fried banana and passion-fruit sauce (espada com banana), the island's improbable, perfect signature. Order it where the boats land: Vila do Peixe in Câmara de Lobos, or the harbourside grills of Machico in the east and Paul do Mar in the west. With it: lapas, limpets grilled in their shells with garlic butter and lemon, and octopus in the village taverns. The market that supplies it all is Funchal's Mercado dos Lavradores (1940): the fish hall's espada row at dawn, the fruit floor's passion-fruit varieties (banana passionfruit, purple, sweet) and custard apples, the flower sellers in Madeiran dress — and the upstairs cafés for a first bolo do caco of the day.

The drink is two islands in one. Poncha — aguardente (sugarcane spirit) whisked with honey, lemon juice and zest, traditionally with a carved wooden muddler (the caralhinho) — is the fishermen's cure-all of Câmara de Lobos, best at its source (the village's bars; the famous roadside original is the Taberna da Poncha at Serra d'Água, up the valley road) and ordered "à pescador," fisherman's style. And then the wine that carries the island's name around the world: Madeira, fortified and heat-aged (the estufagem), in four noble-grape styles from dry to sweet — Sercial, Verdelho, Bual, Malmsey — tasted where they've been blended for centuries: Blandy's Wine Lodge in Funchal (the family firm founded 1811, tours and tastings in the old Adegas de São Francisco), with Barbeito's modern counterpoint across town. Cook the calendar if you can: carne vinha d'alhos (pork marinated in wine and garlic) owns Christmas; bolo de mel, the dark honey-and-spice cake traditionally never cut but broken by hand, keeps for months as the island's edible souvenir. The fine-dining flag flies at Il Gallo d'Oro (two Michelin stars at The Cliff Bay) and William at Reid's Palace (one star) — Madeiran produce in tasting-menu grammar, booked ahead.

Câmara de Lobos at 8 p.m.: an espetada stand dripping on the table, bolo do caco steaming in its basket, the black boats riding the harbor below, and a poncha being whisked to foam at the bar.

The island's sweetest market trick comes with a warning: the Mercado's fruit sellers offer tastings of a dozen passion-fruit varieties — genuinely delicious, and the per-kilo prices at the tourist-facing stalls can run several times the supermarkets'. Buy the tasting experience gladly; buy the fruit for the week at the island's Pingo Doce like everyone else. The same market's fish hall at 7 a.m., by contrast, is pure gift: the espada boats' night catch laid in rows, free to watch and the island's best breakfast theater.

• Village dinner rule — Espetada in Câmara de Lobos, espada in Machico or Paul do Mar: the dishes taste of their harbours, and the drives are short
• Poncha at source — One in Câmara de Lobos, one at Serra d'Água if the road passes; never more than two anywhere — aguardente is honest about its strength
• Lodge before dinner — Blandy's late-afternoon tour and tasting sets up a Funchal evening better than any aperitif elsewhere

The market that anchors this answer keeps shop hours, not holiday hours: the Funchal hall trades 07:00 to 19:00 Monday to Thursday, until 20:00 on Friday, only until 14:00 on Saturday, and it is closed on Sunday — so a Sunday-arrival plan that opens with the fish hall opens with a locked door. The village dinners carry their own friction, because Câmara de Lobos and the eastern harbours are reached by steep, narrow coast roads, and poncha is whisked from cane spirit in measures nobody dilutes: the taxi is the sober part of that evening. And if Madeira is one leg of a longer European trip, the Schengen clock applies here as everywhere in Portugal — 90 days of presence inside any rolling 180-day window, counted back from each day you are in the area, across its 29 countries.

Book one starred table in Funchal, one espetada night in Câmara de Lobos, and leave the market morning unscripted except for the fish hall at dawn.