Da Puny

Da Puny is the Olivieri-family-run Ligurian fish restaurant on the Piazzetta — the harbour-front square at the heart of Portofino — and is the village's most institutionally celebrated dining room, in continuous family ownership since 1958. The restaurant has hosted a generation of Italian and international celebrities (Sinatra, Hepburn, the entire 1950s-60s Hollywood-on-Capri set) and remains, by any reasonable measure, the village's most photographed lunch destination.

The menu is unrepentantly classic Ligurian. Trenette al pesto with the original mortar-and-pestle preparation; spaghetti alle vongole with hand-shucked clams; a hand-line-caught Ligurian sea-bass baked in salt crust with rosemary; a Monterosso anchovy crudo with green olive and sea-fennel; pansoti al sugo di noci (the Ligurian walnut-sauce ravioli that Da Puny has run continuously since 1958); the famous 'farinata di ceci' chickpea flatbread that the kitchen makes daily on a wood-fired stone.

The wine list is short and almost entirely Ligurian — Vermentino from Cinque Terre, Pigato from the Riviera di Ponente, Rossese from Dolceacqua — at the most reasonable harbour-front prices in the village. Glass pours start at €9. The cellar's small Champagne section runs to grower-producers selected by the family.

The dining room and terrace together hold sixty covers — twenty in the indoor stone-walled dining room, forty on the Piazzetta-front terrace directly overlooking the harbour. The summer terrace is the canonical Portofino lunch experience and the booking math is harder than it appears — the restaurant takes phone-only reservations (no email, no online booking) and books two to three days ahead at peak season. Service is family-run and Italian-warm; the captains have worked the room for years.

Da Puny is the birthday-night room in Portofino when the dinner needs to feel like a Riviera institution. The 1958 family ownership is the conversation; the Piazzetta-front terrace at sunset is the canonical Italian harbour view; the menu has not changed in sixty years for very good reasons. Book by phone two-to-three days ahead in summer; ask for a Piazzetta-front terrace four-top; order the salt-crust sea bass and a half-bottle of Cinque Terre Vermentino.