I've lived on the Amalfi Coast for over a decade. I've eaten in places that would make a food critic weep with joy. I've also eaten things that made me question my life choices. This post is about the second kind.
Every coast has its culinary skeletons. The Amalfi Coast, for all its lemon groves and fresh seafood, is no exception. Here are three dishes I've encountered over the years that still haunt me. Consider this a public service announcement.
Horror #1: La Strega — Nutella on focaccia, straight from the pizza oven
Some restaurants along the coast serve an appetizer called La Strega ("the witch"). The concept sounds innocent enough: take pizza dough, roll it out into a neutral focaccia, slice it into strips, pile them up, then dump half a jar of Nutella on top and shove the whole thing into a wood-fired oven.
What comes out is a mountain of dough sticks swimming in molten, almost bubbling Nutella, dusted with powdered sugar so the pieces don't fuse together into one sticky mass. Picture glowing red-hot Nutella on bread. Now picture eating that at 10 PM.
Your cardiologist would not approve. I can confirm this.
Horror #2: Pizza Americana — fries and cheap sausage on a pizza
This one physically hurts me. Pizza Americana (also called pizza con wurstel e patatine fritte) is exactly what it sounds like: a pizza base, red or white sauce, topped with sliced cheap hot dog sausage and a generous mountain of french fries.
I tell every tourist and guest the same thing: "Pizza with french fries is not a real thing." Except it is. Globalization is coming for our food, and it's winning. The target audience is twelve-year-olds, and the eating ritual goes like this: first you dip each fry into the cooled-down mozzarella and tomato sauce. Then you eat the sausage bits separately with a fork. Then you wrap whatever's left in the focaccia crust. It's horrible and yet people order it every single day.
Horror #3: Donkey meat — a historical dish you can still find
This last one is mostly historical, but not entirely gone. The dish is stufato di asino — slow-braised donkey meat.
Here's the backstory. Before roads and cars reached the coast, donkeys and mules did all the heavy work. They carried building materials up thousands of stone steps, hauled goods between villages, and navigated cliff paths that would make a mountain goat nervous. When one of these animals got injured or couldn't work anymore, some families would cook and eat them.
The problem? A donkey that spent its entire life climbing 8,000 steps a day up and down rocky cliffs doesn't exactly produce tender meat. The stuff is tough as leather and smells... distinctive. The only way to deal with it is to braise it for about 20 hours until it falls apart, then drown it in the most aromatic spices you can find to mask the flavor.
Italy already has macellerie equine — butcher shops that sell horse steaks — and that's a conversation for another day. But donkey from the Amalfi Coast is a different level of culinary adventure. One I tried exactly once.
The coast has incredible food. Fresh fish pulled from the sea that morning, handmade pasta with lemon and basil, pastries filled with local ricotta. But every paradise has its dark corners. Now you know where they are. 🍋
