The drive to Syracuse grows increasingly picturesque. Prickly pears are in season in shades of yellow and purple. Carob trees and fat cows dominate the landscape. Baroque villages with flashy cathedrals cling to limestone cliffs. Old men sell September peaches and giant melons out of the backs of beat-up trucks. Marzamemi, a quintessential Mediterranean port with fishing boats in bright blues and yellows, has an unusually large sun-washed central square. At the town's La Conchiglietta restaurant, I find the best spaghetti alle vongole of my trip (my lifelong quest for exceptional versions of this clam dish verges on the religious) and crisp white Inzolia, a well-crafted wine whose production is mostly confined to Sicily. This area is away from the highways that feed the island's more built-up coastline, and nearby is one of the most beautiful swimming beaches I see in Sicily—white sand beside turquoise water that flows between the mainland and Capo Passero Island. Up the coast is the Vendicari Nature Reserve, a habitat that migrating birds use as a stopover on their way south. Reminders of the past include the ruins of a Swabian castle and an abandoned tuna factory.

Syracuse and the neighboring towns of Noto, Modica, and Ragusa Ibla are among the most striking in Sicily. They are also gastronomic centers. In Baroque Noto, the highlight is a granita, tasting of tart fresh lemon and milky almond, at the famous Caffè Sicilia; the owner, Corrado Assenza, who studied agronomy at the University of Bologna, is a genius with traditional southern pastries like cannoli and cassata and with surprising desserts like zabaglione with white pepper and extra-virgin olive oil. Modica, a town impossibly built into two sides of a ravine, is legendary for its chocolate (it was used in the Bronze Age to preserve meat). The most renowned of the shops is Antica Dolceria Bonajuto, a family-run operation since 1880, with chocolate varieties like peperoncini and nutmeg. I am trying not to spoil my appetite, and show commendable restraint by nibbling only a few flavors. The archaic packaging, the signs labeling the cocoa content for each, and the shopkeepers in their white lab coats behind the glass make the shop feel more like an apothecary than a store.

I have made a reservation at Duomo in Ragusa Ibla, presided over by a chef who is arguably Sicily's most celebrated, thirty-eight-year-old Ciccio Sultano. After stints at New York's Felidia restaurant and in Germany, the native son returned home to look for a spot to open his own restaurant and settled on the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ragusa Ibla. "I had been visiting this town since I was a boy, and it's an enchanting place," he says. Ciccio's dining room has almost a British country feel, with its flowered wallpaper and leather chairs. French doors lead onto a small flower-covered terrace. The atmosphere is unpretentious—this is not the domain of a big ego. But then my food arrives, and I forget the surroundings: The amuse-bouche is truffle ice cream between two crackers with a dollop of olive oil. A truffle ice-cream sandwich is something I'd never imagined, but I will want to have it again. A heaping basket of still-warm homemade bread, topped with cherry tomatoes and onions, is set down, and I try not to eat more than a few slices. The next dish is a Sicilian classic, spaghetti with mullet bottarga, or preserved roe. Sultano's version comes with carrot juice (a signature touch)—a strange addition, it seems, until I dig in and discover that it lessens the effect of the fishy bottarga without detracting from its flavor. Then comes swordfish crusted with pistachios and topped with streaks of tomato-basil sauce. A fantastic fresh mulberry sorbet is the palate cleanser. And finally it's time for dessert: cannoli in a prickly pear soup. The delicate ricotta isn't too sweet, and all the traditional ingredients are here—the pears, the almonds, the delicate flaky pastry—but in a more artistic presentation. Sultano's approach is not so much to reinvent the dish but to focus on what is best about it and to introduce a small change that makes it surprising and innovative. Of course, much of the finest Sicilian food reflects the high quality of the local produce, courtesy of the island's fertile soil—virtues of which Sultano is the master.