I read about Da Adolfo in Porter magazine.  The magazine described Da Adolfo as “beloved of the barefoot super-chic and renowned for its delicious simple food and wonderful atmosphere”.  I was sold immediately!

What the article neglected to mention was just how hard it is to get a reservation there! Da Adolfo is situated on it’s own private beach which it shares with a beach club called TreVille Beach Club.  You can access it by road from Positano but it’s a bit of a hike and challenging to find.  The best way to get there is by the restaurant’s boat from the ferry jetty at Positano, but they will only let you on if you have a recommendation.

The restaurant was started in 1966 by Adolfo after seeing Laurito beach from a boat many times. He was attracted by the remoteness of the beach and wanted to create a place for people to come to enjoy the tranquility of the beach.  Since then, Adolfo’s son Sergio has taken on the business, and Sergio’s wife and son are heavily involved too.

Now the allure of the restaurant significantly increases the more you try to get a reservation and fail.  I was calling daily and even had my hotel in Positano try to call for me – but the phone was never answered.  When I finally made it to Da Adolfo I saw first hand how they just allow the phone to ring out, so calling is definitely not the best option!

In short, if you can’t bluff your way onto the boat and sweet talk your way into a table reservation that you don’t have, you’ll need to walk over the day before and get a reservation for the next day. This applies in high season only as I’ve also had friends that have managed to get onto Da Adolfo’s boat in Positano without a reservation or having to bluff, so it is possible to go on the day in the low season.  The boat to Da Adolfo starts at 10am (look out for the boat with the red fish on the mast) and then return trips begin from about 4pm.

Once you arrive at Laurito beach you will see that Da Adolfo is an unassuming beach shack, with loungers out the front for pre and post lunch tan time. If you do manage to get a booking be sure to book these too and be warned – if you are not there by 11am they start to give the loungers away to other punters.  If, like us, you don’t have a lounger at Da Adolfo, you can try the sun loungers at TreVille Beach Club, which are actually better for catching the morning rays. Loungers, towels and sparkling water came at a slightly toppy EUR20 but our bottle of rosé came with a vast selection of delectable snacks to see us through to lunch, so we didn’t feel too hard done by. Lounging at TreVille also has the added bonus of being able to use the TreVille boat to get back to Positano, which is good if you’re in a rush to get back to catch a flight home as the Da Adolfo boat isn’t that frequent and the queue for the first boat back can be quite long.

When the time came to head to our table, we left our towels etc at TreVille to come back to later. Our sitting was at 1.15pm (first sitting is at noon) and when we entered the restaurant was bustling, with the many staff members whizzing around delivering carafes of inviting sangria and plates of mouth watering food. The kitchen is located in a small shack at the back of the restaurant but was bringing out food at an impressive rate.

We were lucky enough to nab the table that is normally reserved for the family and friends of the owners, which was situated in the corner right by the ocean, giving us a great view of the whole restaurant. Our waiter appeared immediately enticing us into ordering a carafe of the white wine and peach sangria to start us off.

After that the ordering is a blur (which I swear has nothing to do with the bottle of rosé consumed in the sun). There is a big blackboard with the day’s offerings scrawled on it in Italian, so we thought it best to just let the waiter guide us with recommendations. We were glad we did as he was spot on – we ended up with a whole selection of the best dishes, being the signature mozzarella cooked on lemon leaves, mussel soup, handmade capunti pasta with green pepper pesto, squid, swordfish parmigiana and fresh seabass served whole. After the main dishes had been guzzled up, we moved on to more rosé for some of us, and the iconic aperol spritz for others. The house rosé is (perhaps unoriginally) named Costa D’Amalfi from the Tenuta San Francesco vineyard and it really hit the spot. We then finished the meal with a selection of desserts…and then rolled back to our sun loungers for a swim and a snooze!

Go here for: a relaxing day filled with lounging, swimming and a long lunch; an afternoon in paradise

Menu highlights: carafes of white wine and peach sangria; mozzarella cooked on lemon leaves collected from wild trees behind the beach; squid; zuppa alle cozze (mussel soup)

Top tips: regardless of how full you are, don’t scrimp on the desserts – the tiramisu and the dolce di Amalfi (orange almond cake) are insanely good…so much so we may have had seconds…

Price: EUR240 all in for 4 people, including drinks

#august2016