I've got chills, they're multiplying

Descended from the thirst-slakers that cooled Arabian nights, sorbets are a beguiling way to embrace the colours and flavours of the season, salivates

- Tom Parker Bowles

A ALFREDO is a small restaurant that sits on the seafront of Santa Marina on the small Aeolian island of Salina. There's a large terrace, gazing out over the eternal azure of the Tyrrhenian Sea, towards Lipari and beyond. Alfredo, the eponymous owner, lean and leonine, is now in his nineties and sits in a chair by the door. He is king of all he surveys. You could order pane cunzato, or 'dressed bread', that Sicilian open sandwich topped with anything from olive oil and herbs to tuna, anchovies, aubergine and capers. They're very good indeed, but really, Alfredo is all about the granita, quite possibly the finest you'll ever taste.

Made fresh every morning from only ice, sugar and various local flavourings, Alfredo’s granite are less watery than other inferior also-rans, less cloyingly sweet, and more intensely, gloriously granular. They crackle and crunch between the teeth, delivering a moment of brain freeze, then a short gasp of shock, before the senses are overwhelmed with pure frosty delight.

In the morning, you could munch your coffee