Are you looking for a cozy and lovely restaurant by the sea in Italy? Starred Michelin restaurant Re Maurì is the right place: keep on reading!
What distinguishes a true seafront restaurant from an ordinary one? The Italian people is ancestrally connected with water, almost as much as it is with food. In the next few lines we will try and describe this connection, which qualifies Re Maurì as one of the best seafront restaurants of the entire Campania region.
Restaurant by the sea in Italy: tradition and poetry of an entire country
Una giornata al mare solo e con mille lire – sang melancholically the Italian singer Paolo Conte in the long-gone 1974 – sono venuto a vedere quest’acqua e la gente che c’è (literally “a day at the seaside alone with just a little money, I came to see this water and the people that were here”). And the young Luca Carboni sang in the ‘80s: mare, mare, mare, sai che ognuno c’ha il suo mare dentro il cuore, sì… e ogni tanto gli fa sentire l’onda (literally “sea, sea, sea, you know that everyone of us has its own sea in his heart, that makes us feel the wave once in a while”). That’s because Italians have got the sea in their hearts but also in their DNA.
From the sea we come (we are cradled in amniotic fluid before being born, aren’t we?), we land and we go back. Always. And that same sea, with its ever-changing colour and shape, encourages us to take risks, to go on adventures, to leave the ordinary behind and perhaps to want the impossible. And that is why, hungry for emotions, searching perhaps for something we have lost that we wish to find again, we veer towards the water’s edge to let the sea shake us or simply, less prosaically, to find some of that breeze able to make us forget about the stressful city, even if just for a little while.
Everyone hopes to spend a day at the seaside. It’s the perfect break from this hectic world, the long-awaited relaxing moment for those that never go on a holiday, but also for those that have never missed the occasion to leave. One cannot just give up the seaside. After we have breathed the salty sea air, left our footprints on the sand, abandoned our thoughts to the rippling water and said goodbye to the sun disappearing below the horizon, we finally listen to our need to eat and to sort out our chaos of emotions and sensations. And the restaurant by the sea in Italy becomes the place to complete the seaside experience, where the flavours of the food mix with the salty air, where you can savour the delicious and delectable catch of the day. But which are the restaurants that can actually promise this sensory experience? It’s easy to call yourself a “seafront restaurant”, but how many times have you been to a place that boasted that title and eventually the only horizon turned out to be a row of concrete houses?
Hence the need for this article, that aims at pointing out the requirements that a seafront restaurant has to meet.
Seafront restaurants in Italy: beauty and raw ingredients
The French call these restaurants Les Pieds dans L’Eau, where you are usually given the possibility to dine on the beach, next to the water, while in Italy there are several different solutions: a romantic dinner by the seashore under the starry sky, a candlelight dinner on a terrace or a beach kiosk that sells food to go, among beach loungers and towels, with the hit of the summer playing in the background. Our peninsula abounds in coastlines studded with this kind of places.
A true seafront restaurant must be close to the water or, at the very least, it should include a terrace overlooking the sea. That is, if you can’t touch the sea, you should at least be able to see it and breathe its air! Such a location can only be found along the coastline, of course. And, speaking of coastline, we must mention one of the excellencies of our land, that is the Amalfi Coast. And there is where we want to go. The highway, the SS 163, twists and turns between lemon fields and sudden panoramic viewpoints, and it takes us from village to village, hamlet after hamlet, a hairpin turn after another. From Vietri sul Mare to Positano, the route is studded with Mediterranean elements: the rocks, the sky, the sea, the colourful roads and the lush vegetation. This journey ends at the beginning of another coastline, which is equally famous, that is the Sorrento Coast.
Seafront restaurant on the Amalfi Coast: all the magic of a unique cuisine
Having clarified, so to speak, how an ideal location should be, let’s move on to the cuisine of our seafront restaurants. First of all, we give space to local ingredients, the so-called zero-mile products. The Salerno area has got countless excellent culinary products to offer: from Buffalo Mozzarella, typical of the Cilento area, to the iconic products of the Amalfi Coast such as lemons, tuna and anchovies, from which the so-called colatura di alici is made, a great sauce for pasta. And then, of course, the fish itself, that must necessarily be fresh, better if caught the same day.
One of the restaurants that combine the elegance of the location and genuine flavours, the fineness of the mise en place and the skilful processing of raw ingredients, is located right here, on the Amalfi Coast, in Vietri sul Mare. We are talking about Re Maurì, awarded with one of the renowned and prestigious Michelin Stars. At our restaurant, based between the beautiful Salerno and the Coast, the menu is the outcome of passion, exploration and elaboration of local products such as the Daily Catch “All’Acqua Pazza”, a creative modification and improvement of the famous “guazzetto all’acqua pazza”, a dish typical of the Campania region. This is just to mention one of the numerous dishes you will find at Re Maurì, and each of them finds its perfect match in our wine list, that includes local as well as national and international labels.
A true seafront restaurant, however, cannot be defined that if it doesn’t succeed in combining the quality of the cuisine and the uniqueness of the location. What is better, facing the sea or being perched over the rocks? Barefoot on the sand or on the sea backwash? Should we therefore find a location that corresponds exactly to our own idea of beauty or should we place the flavour and quality of the products and the raw ingredients before beauty? The latter doesn’t exclude taste. It’s actually the opposite, it completes it. The two concepts not only complement each other, they also enrich one another. In the kitchen, beauty and taste must go hand in hand. The word “gourmet” in fact means “great food and wine connoisseur” but it often also refers to something that is both beautiful and delicious, in other words that is artfully made. This is Re Maurì’s mission.
Special eggplants (chef Lorenzo Cuomo)
Cod with cucumber, celery and seaweed (chef Lorenzo Cuomo)
Delicious gourmet strawberries (chef Lorenzo Cuomo)
Book a table at Re Maurì to deep dive into the wonderful natural setting of the Amalfi Coast and experience an innovative cuisine, ready to offer unexpected and surprising flavours.
Read the other blog articles:
Gulf of Salerno
Gourmet italian restaurant
Oligomineral water
Celiac-friendly restaurant in Salerno
Best cauliflower recipe
Best restaurants Amalfi coast
Where to eat in Salerno
Fish restaurant Salerno
Seafront Salerno restaurant
Monkfish cacciatore recipe
Romantic restaurants Amalfi coast