Faro di Capo d’Orso on the Amalfi Coast inaugurates the 2022 season with a new fine dining project bearing the signature of two-star Michelin chef Andrea Aprea.
A co-branding operation, but above all a partnership of intent between the Ferrara family’s historic restaurant and the award-winning chef, who began his own new entrepreneurial journey a year ago.
The new Faro di Capo d’Orso Andrea Aprea, which exudes the charm of a unique place of rare beauty, meets the contemporary cuisine of Chef Aprea, defining a new experience that touches all the senses.
Nestled among the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast, almost precipitously above the sea and immersed in the thick Mediterranean bush, The Capo d’Orso Lighthouse is a poetic place that enchants the eye at every hour of the day. The view opens wide to the divine coastline, Amalfi and Positano with Li Galli and, on the horizon line, the island of Capri. All around is the deep green of holm oaks and carob trees.
It is here, in a room of only 20 seats, in front of a breathtaking panorama, that Andrea Aprea now brings his concept of contemporary cuisine made of taste and rigor, look and texture, memory and research, smell and flavor.
“Returning to the coast is for me an emotion that is difficult to express in words,” declares Aprea. “These are unparalleled sensations, in the colors of the sea that frames Il Faro di Capo d’Orso, in the scents of wild vegetation, in the warmth of the earth that nourishes the flavors of products that tell us the great as well as the small story. I find here the energy of my emotional landscape, my roots, the suggestions that animate my love of cooking.”
“In the Ferrara family, I found people driven by the same values as me,” the chef continues. “Sharing with them the idea of telling the public something both ancient and new at the same time. We chose to entrust Salvatore Pacifico with the leadership of the kitchen: to develop with him an unprecedented path of influences between substance and flavor, under this unrivaled sky.”
The kitchen of Il Faro di Capo d’Orso
Andrea Aprea, therefore, chose Salvatore Pacifico to lead the kitchen of Il Faro di Capo d’Orso and share their gastronomic vision. Together they developed the restaurant’s proposal, which is expressed in a menu and three tasting routes: Tradition in Progress, Sapori D’Amare, and Contemporaneity.
There are many absolutely new offerings alongside some of Aprea’s iconic dishes such as Tortello with ricotta cheese from the Lattari mountains and double concentration of Neapolitan ragù or Lemon Risotto, dishes that epitomize the underlying values on which the chef has built his culinary research over the years.
The restaurant is managed by the Ferrara family, Pio and his son Bonaventura, who take care of the dining room and the wine cellar at Il Faro di Capo d’Orso, featuring about 1,700 labels including national and international wines, an imported selection of Champagnes, rare bottles and historic vintages, as well as extremely high-quality productions from small wineries.
The location of Il Faro di Capo d’Orso
Between Cetara and Maiori, along the famous Amalfi Coast, on one of the most breathtaking hairpin bends, Il Faro di Capo d’Orso is nestled in the rock overlooking the sea. The room looks like a glass box jutting out of the rock and wide open to the deep blue sea. All around is the thick, wild vegetation of the coast: holm oaks, myrtle and lentisk bushes, heather and rosemary, and more juniper shrubs.
Large floor-to-ceiling windows frame a landscape of rare beauty that changes light and color as the hours pass in this location with an open kitchen: they are not windows but thin diaphragms between inside and outside, between the kitchen and the surrounding landscape. Few materials define the space: glass, living stone and a floor of hand-painted blue majolica tiles from nearby Vietri.
Photo Credits: Aurora Scotto di Minico