Long lunches on the Amalfi Coast
By our Italy specialists · 7 min read
The Amalfi Coast is usually consumed at driving speed, villa to viewpoint. Its real unit of measurement is the lunch that starts at one and ends when the pans are clean.
There is a restaurant above Furore with eleven tables and no sign, where the menu is whatever the owner's brother didn't sell at the morning market. You will not find it on the coast road, because it is not on the coast road — and that is the entire secret of eating well between Sorrento and Salerno. The water-level towns feed the day boats; the terraces above them feed their families.
Climb three hundred steps behind Amalfi's cathedral and you are in Pogerola, where the lemon groves start and the prices halve. The lemons here are the size of grapefruit and sweet enough to eat in wedges, which is exactly how they arrive at the end of lunch, with a bowl of sugar and no explanation.
The water-level towns feed the day boats; the terraces above them feed their families.
What a long lunch actually looks like
It begins with whatever is fried — courgette flowers, anchovies from Cetara, a single arancino the size of a fist — and a carafe of the white nobody bottles for export. Then pasta: scialatielli with mussels if you are near the water, or the paccheri with slow tomato and basil that tastes of nothing and everything. The secondo is optional and usually declined; the second carafe is optional and usually accepted.
Nobody brings a bill until asked. This unsettles travellers on a schedule, which is why our itineraries simply do not schedule anything after lunch on coast days. The afternoon belongs to the table, the walk down through the groves, and the swim you promised yourself.
Cetara, the town that stayed a town
If you have one meal left on the coast, spend it in Cetara. It is still a fishing port first and a destination second — the anchovy fleet pays the bills, and the colatura di alici (a rust-coloured essence pressed from barrel-cured anchovies) goes onto spaghetti with garlic, oil and nothing else. It is the oldest recipe on the coast, arguably the best, and it costs less than a Positano spritz.
Our groups eat there on a Tuesday, when the boats land in the early afternoon and the terraces are locals-only. Small groups matter for exactly this reason: eleven tables cannot seat a coach.
