Positano, Marina del Cantone and memories of Rome: Dal Bolognese, La Sponda and Taverna del Capitano by Bruce Palling

 Positano was not the first Italian destination to make a lasting impact on me, mainly because my initial experience of Italy was Rome rather than the Amalfi Coast. I stopped off in the Eternal City exactly 40 years ago and stayed at the Albergo Nazionale, when the Communists under that nice Enrico Berlinguer, looked as if they might become the first democratically elected Marxist government in the West. Instead, life went on as normal – i.e. a functioning anarchy - and his cousin, Christian Democrat Francesco Cossiga, emerged as Prime Minister and later President.

Alexander Chancellor, who had formerly been the Rome Reuters bureau chief, was in town and we had wonderful meals at Dal Bolognese with other foreign hacks such as my friend Loren Jenkins of Newsweek. I learned quite a lot from Loren when he was a Vietnam correspondent and I was based in Laos. Apart from being a Pulitzer-prize winning correspondent, he was a master when it came to knowing the best restaurants in Saigon, durian in Penang or the source of the finest caviar in Teheran. After a particularly gruelling assignment, Maynard Parker, his editor, took him to Jacques Cagna, then a grand Parisian restaurant. Maynard then rather rashly said, “Pick any wine you like from the list” so they ended up drinking a d’Yquem 1919. His wife Nancy was also a passionate food lover and has since written numerous books on Italian and Mediterranean cuisine and been a formative influence on my own gastrophilia.

Rome was a revelation. There was also the excitement of simply arriving in a stunning location such as Piazza del Popolo, to start dining at 10 pm. Dal Bolognese was also my first encounter with Bollito Misto, which intrigued me, especially with all those kilner jars of mostarda, which surrounded the metal containers for the boiled meats. However, these days I think of Bollito Misto being a bit like Condrieu – fabulous when you first taste it, but humdrum after the first quarter of an hour. There was also another lunch in a simple canopied local trattoria with Loren and a Southern friend of his from the Washington Post, who went on to be foreign editor and columnist back home. He remonstrated with us about how we were in a backwater while the real story was emerging in the US Primaries with Jimmy Carter making his presence felt. Loren looked at him in astonishment, stretched his arms and said, “Jim, look around you – this has no appeal to you at all? You would rather trail after a peanut farmer in a huge press pack than live in Rome?” We were in a tiny triangle of a simple square on a glorious June day in 1976 with the clink of contented customer’s cutlery and the operatic sounds of Italian breaking through the sunlight. I don't recall Jim's response.

My first encounters with serious Italian cuisine had been in Melbourne in the Sixties, where there were a handful of brilliant restaurants such as Florentino, Mario’s and Pellegrini’s but Rome was on a different level, especially with dishes like stinco in Travestere or gnocchi that was light and not leaden.

I had a Roman friend with an amazing villa in Positano, so down we went in her Fiat 500, being hooted and gestured at all the way by truck-drivers who couldn’t quite come to terms with the sight of a male being driven by a female. Beyond Naples, the road clings to the side of huge cliffs rising sheer out of the Tyrrhenian Sea. (The only road I know that is more treacherous is from Simla to Kulu in Himachal Pradesh, where stone cairns on blind corners indicate where a bus has plunged several hundred feet into the Beas River below.)

The first view of Positano is of white and peach-coloured villas layered up the mountainsides with not a single ugly structure as the authorities insist that all buildings have to follow traditional designs. Another culinary first soon followed as went off in my friends boat to Da Adolfo, a restaurant that can only be reached by sea, where they served lightly battered zucchini flowers with pasta. I left listening to Parsifal on a Walkman looking at the surrounding cliffs, close to where Wagner was actually inspired to compose it.

I have been back to Positano half a dozen times, staying with my family at another villa owned by my friend only this time it was perched above Spiaggia del Fornillo, the quieter beach around the corner from Spiaggia Grande. It has the most glorious view of anywhere I have ever stayed.

From the 120-foot terrace, you look directly along the coastline, offset by the tiny cluster of Gallo Islands, once owned by Rudolph Nureyev.

There is also a private kitchen garden to the left, where an ancient retainer would pick grapes and herbs for breakfast. This is not the ideal destination for those with hip replacements as you have to navigate several pathways and staircases to get to the villa 

and then walk down another 80 steps on a private path to the beach below. However it was the perfect place for our boys as even though they were something like seven and nine, we happily let them go down there by themselves as it was cut off from the rest of town and they quickly found friends of the same age.

On our most recent visit, I was amazed to discover a simple shack on Fornillo Beach, which served perfect espresso for E1 and litre and a half bottles of fizzy water for E2. If you are too dozy to walk around the cliffs to the main Positano Grande Bay, there is a free boat shuttle that goes every quarter of an hour or so. 

Even though I have never seen the point in swimming or being bleached in the sun, it was perfection just sipping coffee in the shade while Lucinda wallowed in the shallows and I merely knocked off Charlie Cumming’s latest Thriller (A Divided Spy) and then started reading Volker Kutschers brilliant Babylon Berlin, set in the dying days of the Weimar Republic.

Breakfast on the terrace

All of the necessities of civilised life were available once you had heaved yourself up the stairs and wandered a couple of hundred yards down the road to a well-stocked delicatessen. For a small consideration, the nephew of the proprietor then hauls everything back to your villa.

I can’t claim to have tried many restaurants in Positano save my favourite – La Sponda at Le Sirenuse, one of the handful of hotels that I am always happy to return. It was created in the early Fifties by four Neapolitan brothers from the Sersale family, first as a bolthole, rather like Adrian Zecha and Amanpuri, before becoming an all-consuming passion and one of the great hotels on the planet. Positano was an important trading centre in medieval times but by the end of the Nineteenth Century, most of the population had emigrated to America. In the brief mention of Positano in my 1912 Baedeker, “many of the natives travel through Southern Italy as hawkers”. It avoided any desecration during the Second World War and by the early Fifties, Positano was being discovered by the more adventurous European traveller and it’s fame was further enhanced by a travel piece written by John Steinbeck in the May 1953 issue of Harpers Bazaar. He tells how Emperor Tiberius didn’t trust the bakers in Capri, so he relied on flour ground in a mill at Positano that still exists. His other trite but true observation is “Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.”

 The article has now been reproduced in an exquisite cloth bound postcard sized volume by Antonio Sersale, the son of Paolo, who now runs the hotel. and is given to all guests on arrival. His wife Carla also has a stylish business selling clothing and accessories called Emporio Sirenuse. Further enhancement of Positano was provided by it being the place where Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf met in the first of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley Quartet. The Sersales are serious Anglophiles even though the majority of their guests these days are Americans. I came across them nearly 40 years ago and Marchese Paolo, the lapsed Communist founder of the hotel, became a client after I founded a small tour operating business and we sent him and his friends to India a couple of times. The connections continued in other ways as Antonio’s boys ended up in the same boarding school in England as one of our sons and later, the same crammer as our other son. Shades of Anthony Powell…

The only serious competition to Le Sirenuse is from San Pietro, which is a couple of kilometres out of town, so in a sense it is the Cipriani to the Sirenuse’s Gritti Palace. The last time I ate at the San Pietro, the food was first-rate and then it was the only one in town with a Michelin star.

However, La Sponda has played serious catch-up, especially with their latest twenty something chef Gennaro Russo who has brought back a welcome simplicity to its culinary approach. Not only does it have a Michelin star, but it is placed above San Pietro's Zass, which in subtle Michelinspeak means they consider it superior.

The star dish is his marinaded anchovies with local olive oil, salt and Amalfi lemons layered on the illustrated plate rather like a series of Positano villas. I have had this on numerous occasions here but in its latest version it had simpler and more well defined flavours – something that is far harder to achieve than it sounds.


Then there was a carpaccio with fennel pine nuts and olives.

For once, the regional white wine was a perfect match – an Etna Bianco from Tenuta delle Terre Nere 2013, which had the minerally austerity of a fine Pouilly Fume for a fraction of the price. Justerini’s sell it for something like £100 a case In Bond, which is a steal.

Another starter that impressed me with its simplicity and intensity was a tartlette of tomato, mozzarella, basil and pesto. The main courses were equally simple and fresh – 

Sea Bream with olives and tomatoes and 

slow cooked John Dory with candied lemons and potatoes. It is impossible to beat these simple bold flavours, especially when you are gazing down over the dome of Santa Maria Assunta to the bay and hillside villas opposite.

Antonio is a fidget, which is quite useful when you have such a gem as Le Sirenuse. He is always striving to improve it, make the outdoor spaces even more stunning.

Antonio with his newly commissioned Martin Creed          Photo: Lucinda Bredin

He has even started commissioning cutting edge art works for various rooms and terraces, including an installation by Martin Creed.

Just above the entrance, Antonio has opened a superb outdoor bar called Franco’s, which is perched, even higher up the hill with wider views. It is dominated by a huge sculpture by Giuseppe Ducrot, which looks as if it might have been inspired by the Greeks at Syracuse. 

However, we had also been told about Taverna del Capitano, formerly two Michelin stars and now one. This had come up over the years when I attended the annual Festa a Vico food festival nearby, but apparently there was some sort of feud between the owners and the organisers of the Festa, so I had never managed to get there. There is something wonderfully stubborn about residents of the Amalfi Coast. Antonio has lived in Positano all his life apart from his schooling in England, yet he has never once been to Taverna del Capitano because he is utterly loyal to the De Simone family who run Lo Scoglio. In his usually effusive manner, Antonio was going to sort out a boat ride there for us but alas, it was already overbooked.

We were faced with either hiring a car, which would have been £80 or catching a local bus just up the hill from Le Sirenuse. Here is another example of how similar Italy is to India. Along came a wheezing bus overflowing with customers so that we could only find space to stand up over the rear axle for the entire journey of half an hour or so. Hardly worth complaining as the fare was E1. The next day, when we caught the same bus at precisely the same time, we were the sole customers. No idea what was going on.

 Marina del Cantone is entirely different to Positano – rather like comparing Rock to the Scillies. It is a quiet fishing village entirely framed by huge cliffs with a simple beach between them. It feels like I imagine Antibes did in the Twenties - charmingly low key, unrushed and unspoilt. Food is taken very seriously here, as there are a couple of other Michelin places up the hill as well as Taverna del Capitano. Again, this is entirely a family affair, run by the Caputo’s. The restaurant is virtually on the beach but raised above it with the only sight to the west being the jetty that holds Lo Scoglio.

What makes Taverna del Capitano outstanding is the produce – small boats deliver their catch twice daily. 

Most of the maritime zone around here is a National Park, so stocks are healthy along the fringes. The style of the cuisine is what I term classically innovative – no tedious foams or paintbrush smears but certainly creative flourishes. 

The first starter was a near raw shrimp, which was, could have been Japanese.

The wine list is one of the best I have seen in Italy with amazing vintages at rock bottom prices. We couldn’t resist the Flaccianello 97 at a ludicrously low price of E85 – it is nearly double that wholesale. This is almost my favourite Super-Tuscan made by the inspired people who also have Fontodi Chianti Classico.

 Another starter was a hot rock with a selection of raw fillets of Palamita (Bonito); langoustine and anchovies, which you cook to your own taste. Sounds slightly jejune but the freshness of the produce really raised it to a sublime level.

 The zuppa di frutti di mare had superb saline flavours.

 The first pasta dish was chef Alfonso’s linguine with seaweed cooked in an octopus liver sauce, raw octopus and grated cuttlefish bone. This was raising the level and had an array of flavours I had never encountered before.

Then there was homemade pasta with zucchini, basil and four different local cheeses, though for me the cheeses dominated the dish too much.

 However the dishes I really adore here are the ones that are happy to confront the diner with strident tastes – the risotto with Moray Eel sauce and almond cream with Carnaroli rice was knock out. There was primitiveness in the flavours, like a sea urchin that had gone rogue.

And then perhaps the best of them all – a Scorfano (Rockfish) with onion and tomato jelly and celery sauce. 

Accompanying it was the fish’s ugly head with divine cheeks to coax out of their face. I salute chefs who dig deep with flavour combinations, especially if they are taking risks with what fine diners will accept.

 Then there was a red mullet packaged in fried potato with cherry tomatoes and oregano, maionese sauce. This though didn’t have the kick I was hoping for from the mullet – a bit too polite.

The final dish was a miniature selection of sorbets and ice creams, which was the perfect way to end such a wonderful meal. 

That is, of course, if you don't include the coffee and petit fours. I should add that the prices are seriously good value - most main courses were only E25.

After lunch, Mariella Caputo, the sommelier, showed us their wonderful cellar just at the edge of the property. It is stocked with many of the greatest vintages of Italian wines at prices that make you want to move in for a week and try them all.

 We were about to trudge up the hill and look for a stray bus, when Mariella told us that Gianluca, the local speedboat owner, had to pick someone up at Positano so would we like a ride back? It probably takes less than half an hour to make the journey, hugging the coastline and gazing at the cliff faces soaring up to nearly 2000 feet above you. There are tiny coves with people relaxing on them, having got there by boat. Positano looms ahead with clouds swirling at the top of the peaks – I can’t think of a more romantic journey along the Mediterranean. We were dropped right at the base of our villa on Fornillo Beach and merely had to stagger up the staircase to return home. The first thing we did on reaching our villa was ring our friends and book it for next year – Britain may be going through some bizarre jingoistic phase of rejecting Europe but for us, we can’t wait to return. 

Steinbeck was right after all.

Best Books: Amalfi: Aspects of the City and her Ancient territories by Robert Gathorne-Hardy (Faber 1968) Dated but useful historical stuff

The Food and Wine Guide to Naples and Campania by Carlo Capalbo (Pallas Athene 2005) More than a decade old but still the best culinary guide to the region

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (Everyman Omnibus Edition 2000). This describes Positano in the Fifties under the name of Mongibello