Cala Luna

Cala Luna is the Lazio-family-run beach-front dining room on the Lungomare Giardina. The village's main seafront promenade. And is one of the most photographed view-driven dining settings on the Sicilian Tyrrhenian coast. The restaurant has run on the same lungomare location for over twenty years and runs the canonical Cefalù sunset-seafood experience.

The cuisine is recognisably Sicilian seafood. The signatures are the harbour-fresh primi: spaghetti alle vongole with Tyrrhenian-coast clams; a hand-rolled busiate alla trapanese with Mazzara red prawn; a wood-fired Cefalù dentice baked in salt crust; a slow-cooked Mediterranean octopus with green olive and lemon confit; a Cefalù 'pasta alla siciliana'. A regional sea-urchin pasta that the Lazio kitchen has refined for over a decade.

The wine list runs to 200 references with a Sicilian core. Etna DOC, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Marsala. And a tightly chosen Champagne section. Glass pours start at €5 and the by-the-glass programme runs a generous ten-glass Sicilian flight.

The terrace is the experience. Twenty tables along the lungomare, a 270-degree view of the Tyrrhenian coast and (on a clear evening) the lights of Sant'Ambrogio visible across the water, and a south-facing afternoon-sun aspect that is the canonical Cefalù lunch setting. The kitchen times the dessert course with the sunset for diners booked on the terrace at the appropriate evening hour.

Cala Luna is the easy-first-date room in Cefalù. The lungomare beach-front terrace is the conversation, the canonical Sicilian seafood is the cuisine, and the kitchen's mid-tier register makes a date booking less weighted. Book the corner two-top closest to the western edge of the terrace at sunset.