Our cooking philosophy
Taste and beauty are the keys to our idea of home restaurant; we offer you buono and bello! Good and beautiful!
We take great care in choosing first class, genuine ingredients, seasonal food and zero kilometre food (ie food produced by us in our kitchen garden), fresh strictly hand-made pasta. Our menus, therefore, change weekly so that we always offer fresh, seasonal dishes.
Let the chef take you on a journey through the tastes of the Amalfi Coast. A journey by sea which provides the freshest fish and by land where the peasant knowledge of tending the land producing fruit and vegetables that taste of the sun. The yellow lemons, the green countryside and the blue sea on the Amalfi Coast tie the cooking and the territory firmly together.
The fabulous beauty of the towns, their art treasures have a depth of flavours, aroma and perfume which are present in our local fish: prawns, red scorpion fish, seabream, amberjack, octupus, oily fish but also in the fragrant lemons, courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes, basil, fiordilatte cheese, ricotta and other dairy products from the Lattari Mountains – the main ingredients of unforgettable, wholesome dishes.
If we are lucky enough to live in such a beautiful and bountiful place, we can only bring the best to the table by exclusively preparing our exquisitely varied local produce.
Our cookery in this sense is a harmonious blend of tradition and modern cuisine.
So you may decide to taste Gragnano spaghetti with anchovy colata sauce from Cetara, a distilled sea-sauce thought to be the heir to the Roman garum sauce or you may try the historically, traditional dish “’ndundere”, a kind of gnocchi which Unesco has designated one of the oldest kinds of pasta in the world, served with fresh ricotta cheese.
Another tradtional, evergreen hand-made pasta is “scialatielli” made with flour, milk, cheese, basil, salt and pepper and is ideal for any kind of sauce because its rough surface absorbs all the tasty juices. Then there are sea-food risottos, pasta thimbles with squid fish sauce, giant prawns with flat linguine pasta, all which alternate with refined dishes, such as, Mediterranean crepes, giant fusilli pasta with oily fish sauce or an Amalfitan lemon sauce and a carnaroli rice dish with prawn and citrus fruit sauce.
There is also a choice for those who prefer meat or vegetables to fish: the classic, home-made gnocchi (potato dumplings) with a tomato and mozzarella sauce, ham and ricotta crepes, delicious porcini mushroom parcels, citrus fruit risotto (straight from our kitchen garden) and the famous aubergine parmigiana or fresh seasonal courgettes, roast meat etc.
Our home-grown vegetables are served as side dishes: aubergines, courgettes, wild asparagus, tomatoes, lettuce and potatoes.
Our main dishes are of course mostly fish , shellfish, crustaceans, fresh catch of the day which is so good that it needs little added to it – simple preparation allows you to appreciate its freshness and delicate flavour.
You will find cod, squid and potatoes, grilled prawns , swordfish, seabass or seabream.
And, not to be missed, our wonderful cakes will finish off the meal. These are also an explosion of flavours and perfumes of the Amalfi Coast. Our classic grandmother’s dessert, Neapolitan rum baba and the famous chocolate and almond Caprese cake, as well as the chef’s own specialities from Neapolitan patisserie works of art: sfogliatelle, pear and ricotta cake, lemon delice.
Any meal on the Amalfi Coast must end with our Amalfitan lemon liqueur “limoncello”, an intense yellow, fragrant infusion of lemons which is a delight to the palate and which we are delighted to offer you.
Our only rule in our home-restaurant, which is not a restaurant as such, is that the menu will be different every week and our guests will have a choice of two menus – a seafood menu or a meat/vegetable menu based on seasonal food and fresh produce.