O’ Parrucchiano La Favorita: The Sorrento Tourist Trap That’s Worth Visiting
After a day spent maneuvering through the crowded streets of Naples, we arrived in Sorrento. The intense heat of the afternoon had given way to rain, an unrelenting downpour that flooded the sidewalks and drenched our clothes in a matter of seconds. We raced uphill, on squeaking, waterlogged sneakers, to our Airbnb to dry off and take a breath.
A couple of hours and a change of clothes later, the rain had stopped, and we went out again in search of a meal. It’s not easy to choose a restaurant in Sorrento—they all seem to have some combination of warm, comforting aromas and walls covered in rustic wood or vintage tiles. We wandered onto Corso Italia, a busy commercial street that runs parallel to the coast of the Gulf of Naples. We were looking at a tavern’s menu when I glanced up and caught sight, across the street, of a stone-and-tile dining room with lemon trees growing in curlicues from their pots on a set of marble stairs, all the way up to the glass ceiling of O’ Parrucchiano La Favorita.
As most rational food lovers do, I immediately checked Yelp and TripAdvisor (you’ll find more information on the latter in Europe) for reviews. They were mixed; some visitors considered the place a tourist trap, while others effused about the best meal they ever ate at O’Parrucchiano. It’s rare for me to spend money in anything resembling a tourist trap. But this place was so Old World inviting that I couldn’t resist. Besides, it’s Sorrento. How bad could the food be?
Not bad at all, in my experience. While the service won’t win any points for friendliness or speediness, the food was solidly good. I had the cannelloni, which O’ Parrucchiano claims to have invented when the restaurant first opened in 1868. While I can’t confirm the truthiness of this statement, I can verify that it’s well-made—the pasta cooked to al dente perfection, the filling creamy, and the sauce tangy with fresh tomatoes, if lacking in heat. My husband chose the gnocchi a la Sorrentine, tender house-made pasta smothered with a plum tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella, and topped with deliciously fragrant basil.
Though I wouldn’t classify this as the best food I’ve ever tasted, the experience of eating on the outdoor patio, strung with hundreds of tiny lights and located just in front of a garden blooming with geranium and lemon trees that dangled fruit-laden branches over the edges of the room, made it memorable. The restaurant also had plenty of vegetarian options, which can be harder to come by than you might imagine in a number of major European destinations.
But the best part of the meal, the one I lingered over the longest, was the limoncello. I’ve had this digestif in more restaurants than I can count, and have even made it myself at home (I used this recipe, which is on the mild side). But thanks to the limone di Sorrento, a cultivar of the oldest and best-known citrus in Italy, the limoncello of Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast is the leagues apart from the rest.
So even if the meal wasn’t one for the record books, I still found something at O’ Parucchiano that was well worth the trip. This isn’t often the case for heavily touristed restaurants, but sometimes keeping an open mind yields memorable results.
