Summer dishes on the Amalfi Coast at best restaurants in Praiano.

M'Ama!: The Tradition of the Amalfi Coast Reinterpreted with a Contemporary Eye

The M'Ama! restaurant in Praiano was born as an act of love for cuisine and for the products of our land. Chef Raffaele Mascolo interprets the gastronomic tradition of the Amalfi Coast through a contemporary cuisine that highlights ingredients selected from small local producers. A continuous dialogue between chef and territory, in the spirit of food that is good, clean and fair.

In summer, the M'Ama! menu becomes a journey between marine and seasonal vegetable flavours, between refined techniques and raw ingredients that speak for themselves.

The Unmissable Summer Dishes at M'Ama!

The raw seafood selection is perhaps the dish that best embodies the spirit of the restaurant: red prawns, langoustines, coffee and anise-marinated sea bass, tuna tartare and soy-citrus marinated tuna sashimi. A selection that allows no room for approximation, designed for those who want the Amalfi Coast on their palate in its most direct form.

The Vialone Nano risotto with seafood aromas, seared red mullet and yellow peach is one of the signature summer dishes: a rice that absorbs the aromas of the sea and opens up to the sweetness of seasonal fruit, with the mullet bringing that bold character typical of local catch.

Gentile linguine with zucchini cream, zucchini alla scapece with mint and Carmasciano pecorino cheese deserves special mention, because it tells exactly the story of M'Ama!'s approach: the pasta is from Pastificio Gentile, a Campanian excellence; the pecorino comes from Azienda Filomena di Santo in Carmasciano — a sheep's milk cheese with a bold character that enriches the sweetness of the zucchini with a savoury, complex note. A dish that appears simple but is in fact the result of a chain of precise choices.

The slow-cooked capon on carrot cream, truffle shavings and Tramonti saffron tapioca chips is one of the most elegant dishes on the menu. The saffron comes from Azienda del Tintore, a producer who cultivates this precious spice on the terraced hillsides of Tramonti, in the hinterland of the Amalfi Coast — a rare, outstanding product that transforms an already refined dish into something truly memorable.

Among the vegetable proposals, the seasonal vegetable tartlet with Centogiorni pea purée celebrates one of the most ancient and valuable legumes in the Campanian tradition: the Centogiorni pea, with its long growing cycle, boasts a sweet and intense flavour, here worked into a cream and paired with radishes, yellow and red cherry tomatoes, zucchini, aubergines and carrots.

Tasting Menus

For those who wish to experience M'Ama! in its fullest expression, two tasting menus are available:

The Slow Food Chefs' Alliance Tasting Menu (€75) is built entirely around the alliance's producers and heritage products: a four-course journey that moves from the vegetable tartlet to the linguine with Carmasciano pecorino, from the capon with Tramonti saffron to the hazelnut semifreddo filled with sour cherries.

The Buon Ricordo Menu (€65, including the Buon Ricordo ceramic plate) offers a different journey: Margherita gnocchetti with rocket pesto and clams, seared bluefin tuna with mustard, honey and blueberry gel, and Tiramisù Bavarian cream. A more marine sequence, designed for the guest who wants the Amalfi Coast even in the main course.

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Nonna Nonna: The Flavours of Home, Recipes From the Heart

If M'Ama! looks at tradition through a contemporary lens, Restaurant Nonna Nonna Praiano embraces it without filters. The restaurant was born from the desire to rediscover and celebrate the authentic gastronomic traditions of the Amalfi Coast: genuine flavours, familiar aromas, the atmosphere of a Sunday family lunch. The inspiration comes from two real grandmothers, Margherita and Erminia, who with love and dedication passed down their passion for good cooking and the cherished dishes of memory.

Here too, however, tradition is not nostalgia for its own sake: every dish is built on carefully selected ingredients, many of them tied to the territory of the Lattari Mountains and the Amalfi Coast.

The Unmissable Summer Dishes at Nonna Nonna

The selection of local cheeses and cured meats from the Lattari Mountains is the perfect welcome for anyone who wants to understand immediately where they are: the Monti Lattari, which separate the Amalfi Coast from the Sorrentine Peninsula, have been a territory of pastoral farming and cheese production for centuries. Caciocavallo, Provolone del Monaco, aged cured meats — a starter that is already a story.

Gentile tubetti pasta with local squid is one of the most honest dishes on the menu: Pastificio Gentile's short pasta meets squid fished in the waters off Praiano, in a preparation that tastes of summer and harbour, of simplicity and genuine flavour.

Gentile spaghetti with yellow and red cherry tomatoes, provolone and basil are the quintessential Amalfi Coast dish: few ingredients, all of absolute quality, which together produce something irreducible to any other cuisine in the world.

Among the main courses, the sea bass fillet in acqua pazza style returns to an ancient, humble but extraordinarily effective technique: fish cooked in its own water with tomatoes and aromatic herbs — modest in name and noble in result. And Grandma's meatballs in tomato sauce are perhaps the dish that more than any other fulfils the restaurant's promise: real home cooking, the genuine article.

For the vegetarian table, the Paolo Amato Burratina on yellow and red cherry tomatoes is a small masterpiece of gastronomic honesty. The burratina is from Azienda Paolo Amato, a leading producer of quality mozzarella in Campania, and the cherry tomatoes — yellow and red — bring that sweet-acid brightness that only the southern sun can produce.

The side dishes at Nonna Nonna deserve as much attention as the main courses: the zucchini alla scapece — marinated with vinegar and mint following the Campanian tradition — are one of those preparations that, once tasted, you find yourself searching for ever after.

To finish, the Amalfi Coast Lemon Delight: a dessert that is almost a symbol here on the Amalfi Coast, and which at Nonna Nonna finds its domestic and affectionate version — exactly as it should be.

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Two Restaurants, One Philosophy: The Territory as the Main Ingredient

What unites M'Ama! and Nonna Nonna, beyond their different styles, is the same underlying conviction: the territory is at the heart of every dish. Pastificio Gentile, Azienda Filomena di Santo with its Carmasciano pecorino, Azienda del Tintore with its Tramonti saffron, Paolo Amato with his burratina, the producers of cheeses and cured meats from the Lattari Mountains, the Praiano fishermen with their squid — every name in this story is a piece of the landscape visible from the hotel's terrace.

Eating in Praiano in summer means doing all of this: watching the sea, smelling the lemon in the air, and finding in the plate the same things that surround you. It is this continuity between landscape and cuisine that makes the Amalfi Coast a unique and unrepeatable experience.