Amalfi Coast Trip – Day Three (Chiosco Bar San Costanzo)

We arrived in Termini ready for the main part of our walk and went on the hunt for a little drink. I was a little put off by the staff member who gave the hard sell to sit in this roadside cafe arrangement, but the others had started to sit down and it seemed an acceptable place for a drink.

The owner and what I think was his son were friendly, although there was quite a lot of hard selling to get us to buy things. When we sat down we were the only customers at the cafe, although by the time we left nearly all of the outside seats had been taken. I say outside seats, there actually weren’t any inside seats, so I could have just put all the seats had been taken.

There are a surprisingly number of reviews on TripAdvisor about this restaurant and some are very positive, but a few state that they believe they’ve been the victim of a scam. This isn’t entirely a surprise as the prices are a little vague and the menu is handwritten. We ordered three Limoncello spritzers each and they were actually reasonably priced at €4, although other tables might have been charged a different amount.

The others went for hot meals, but I went for something simpler, the Caprese salad, which was effectively just tomatoes and cheese. The owner claimed that everything was home grown and although I’m unsure about that, the tomatoes tasted fresh with a rich flavour, the cheese was flavoursome and this was topped off by one of the better olive oils that I’ve had. For the €7 this cost I thought that was entirely satisfactory.

The dining environment was partly rather lovely and partly bloody awful. The roadside seats outside gave us an al fresco dining experience (on that note, apparently al fresco in Italian refers to being in prison rather than outside dining) but it also meant that we were a little exposed to exhaust fumes every few minutes. Turning down the additional items available for sale would have frustrated me if I was dining alone, but we left that to Gordon who dealt with the matter with some elegance and clarity of mind.