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

Taormina eats like the resort it is — glamorous at the top, and best where it forgets to be. Breakfast is the town's one non-negotiable ritual: granita with a warm brioche col tuppo, eaten sitting down. The institution is Bam Bar, a tiny granite palace off the Corso where the fruit ices (lemon, peach, mulberry — gelsi — in season) and the coffee granita with cream are made fresh through the morning and the tables are gone by eleven; the form is Sicilian, the execution here is the benchmark. From there the day runs through the Corso's tiers: the focaccia and arancini counters (Da Cristina's takeaway queue runs on locals), the gelaterie, and the old caffè of Piazza IX Aprile (the Wunderbar, the square's terrace since the dolce-vita years) for the aperitivo at the view's golden hour.

The trattoria canon is the Ionian coast's: involtini di pesce spada — swordfish rolled around breadcrumbs, pine nuts and citrus; sarde a beccafico; caponata, the sweet-sour aubergine stew the island argues over village by village (Taormina's runs rich and tomato-deep); pasta with the season's fish and wild fennel; and the granita's savoury cousin, the mulberry-and-almond ices of the pasticcerie, with cassata and cannoli (filled at the counter, in the correct Sicilian discipline) behind the glass. Where: Vicolo Stretto (the lane is the name, tables in a jewel-box near the Corso) and Osteria RossoDiVino cook the town's modern Sicilian; Gambero Rosso down at Mazzarò has grilled the day's catch by the beach since the 1940s; La Giara keeps the grand old dining room's flame; and the Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo's terrace — cocktails over the theater-and-Etna axis since 1873 — is the splurge the town was invented for, priced accordingly and worth it once.

The drink with the address is uphill: Bar Turrisi in Castelmola, pouring since 1947, is famous for vino alla mandorla — almond wine, a sweet white infused with almonds and herbs in the village's own recipe — served on a terrace over the strait in a bar whose décor (a cheerful cult of fertility symbols) is the other thing everyone photographs. Back in town, the lists run on the island's south-eastern pour: the Etna slopes' reds and whites from the terraces' cellars (the volcano is the view, so it is also the bottle), Malvasia delle Lipari for the sweet course, and the almond granita standing in for dessert half the year. Take home from the Corso's food shops: capers, mulberry jam, almond paste sweets (pasta di mandorla), and a bottle of almond wine in Turrisi's own bottling for the story.

Bam Bar at 9 a.m.: a marble table, a glass of black mulberry granita sweating in the heat, a golden brioche beanie beside it, and the Corso's parade beginning outside the door.

The granita's protocol divides Sicily in two and Taormina sits on the line: on this coast the granita is breakfast — spooned, dipped into with the brioche's tuppo (the cap), never hurried — and a bar that serves it in a paper cup to go has told you everything about itself. The second detail is the almond wine's address problem: imitations line the Corso's shelves, but the original is a bus ride up — Castelmola's Bar Turrisi, family-run since 1947, where the wine comes with the family's other invention, the running joke of the décor; going up for the sunset glass is the town's best-value ritual and the one the day-trippers never make.

• Granita is a meal — Bam Bar by 9:30, seated, brioche mandatory; skip the hotel breakfast entirely
• Fish at the shore, classics in town — Mazzarò's beach kitchens for the grill, the Corso lanes for caponata and involtini
• One terrace splurge — The Timeo for the sunset drink (book the table), the Wunderbar for the people's version across the square

The best things here are small and early. The granita counter is a handful of marble tables that are taken by mid-morning, and the fruit ices follow the orchards, so the mulberry or the peach somebody came for may not be the flavour being made that week. The almond wine is a village uphill from the town and the ride up is a bus or a taxi rather than a walk — the Saracen path is a climb — so the sunset glass has a return journey attached that should be settled before the first one is poured. And resort economics sit behind every bill: the terraces that frame the volcano charge for the frame, while the lanes 2 streets back cook the same Ionian canon for a fraction, so the plan that works is 1 view splurge and the rest of the week inland of the postcard.

Start tomorrow at Bam Bar, book Vicolo Stretto for dinner, and end the trip with almond wine on Bar Turrisi's terrace as the strait lights up.