The Honest Price on an Honest Terrace
C'era Una Volta — "Once upon a time" — is a name that contains its own philosophy. It sits on Via Guglielmo Marconi, the Amalfi Coast Road above Positano proper, positioned slightly outside the town's most expensive real estate and therefore slightly outside its most inflated pricing. The terrace rooftop takes in a wide panorama of the gulf and the coastline — the view that makes Positano photographers return every year — and the kitchen below it operates with the quiet confidence of somewhere that does not need to justify its prices with theatrics.
In a town where a plate of pasta can cost €30 and a pizza requires a second mortgage, C'era Una Volta remains one of the genuinely fair addresses on the Amalfi Coast. A full dinner — antipasto, pasta, main course, dessert, and a bottle of local wine — runs comfortably under €50 per person. This is not because the kitchen cuts corners: it is because the family has made a decision about what kind of restaurant they want to run and has held to it against considerable pressure to move upmarket.
The wood-fired pizza oven is the kitchen's most valuable asset. The crust achieves the right combination of char and chew that defines serious Neapolitan pizza — slightly blistered on the underside, open-crumbed and yielding at the centre, substantial enough at the cornicione to support the toppings without collapsing. The margherita with Agerola fiordilatte and San Marzano is the benchmark. The anchovy pizza — anchovies from Cetara, capers, black olives, a scatter of dried Amalfi chilli — is the test of whether a kitchen understands how salt interacts with heat. This one passes.
The gnocchi alla positanese — the house pasta, made fresh daily — arrives with Tyrrhenian prawns, cherry tomatoes from the hillside gardens above Montepertuso, and a quantity of fresh basil that confirms the kitchen's priorities. The seafood antipasto plate is an education in Campanian coastal cooking: marinated anchovies from Cetara, battered and fried zucchini blossoms with ricotta, baby octopus in tomato, local mussels opened in white wine. For a team dinner where the budget is finite and the expectations are for genuine Italian cooking rather than tourist approximations, C'era Una Volta is one of the most reliable addresses in Positano.
The Shuttle — A Detail Worth Knowing
C'era Una Volta operates a free shuttle service to and from the restaurant in the evening — a thoughtful provision given that Via Marconi, while accessible, sits above the town and requires the Amalfi Coast Road's characteristic hairpin navigation. The shuttle collects guests from the Piazza dei Mulini in the center of Positano, which means the evening requires no car hire, no taxi negotiation, and no anxious walk along a road with no pavement. For groups using this as a team dinner venue, the logistics are considerably simpler than most equivalent restaurants on the coast.
What to Order
Begin with the mixed seafood antipasto plate — it covers every element of the Campanian coast's relationship with cured and fresh fish and establishes the kitchen's competence before the pasta arrives. For first course, the gnocchi alla positanese is the correct choice; the pasta dish named for the town should be ordered at least once in any visit to Positano, and this version is among the most honest on the coast. For pizza, the anchovy and caper is the sophisticated choice; the salsiccia e friarielli — Neapolitan pork sausage with the bitter greens that grow on the volcanic slopes above Naples — is the choice that surprises. The ricotta and pear cake for dessert closes the meal with the clean sweetness that confirms this kitchen bakes with the same seriousness it cooks. For the comparison points in Positano: Don Giovanni covers the same honest trattoria register in town; La Tagliata above Montepertuso represents the full communal feast version of this approach at higher altitude.