Fornillo Beach: The Quieter Cove
To reach Da Ferdinando from the main beach at Positano, you walk around the western inlet — a five-minute path that takes you from the photographed, crowded Spiaggia Grande into a smaller, calmer world. Fornillo Beach has always been the beach that Positano residents chose for themselves when the main stretch became unmanageable: less organized, less famous, with a quality of light in the afternoon that photographers have been trying to capture accurately for a century.
Da Ferdinando occupies the beach directly. The restaurant and beach club are effectively a single organism: sunloungers and umbrellas arranged on the sand give way to tables that shade into a covered terrace, the sea immediately in front, the Lattari cliffs behind. It is a family operation — the kind where the same people who take your lunch order also confirm your lounger reservation and know whether you prefer the sun or the shade. The informality is not laziness; it is a deliberate choice to operate at the temperature of the beach rather than the temperature of a dining room.
The menu is appropriately focused. The seafood risotto — made with the mixed daily catch — is the restaurant's defining dish: deeply flavoured, properly made with carnaroli that has been coaxed through the slow addition of prawn stock until it reaches the correct consistency, then finished with a spoonful of cold Campanian butter. The tuna, when the Amalfi boats bring bluefin, is served barely seared with a salad of capers, Sicilian olives, and fresh basil from the terrace garden. The mozzarella di bufala salads — made with production from the Paestum buffalo farms forty kilometres down the coast — are the most refreshing first course on a hot afternoon in Positano.
A day at Da Ferdinando works as a complete programme: arrive late morning, claim your sunlounger (€8 per person, returned if you eat lunch), order the seafood risotto at 13:00 with a bottle of chilled Marisa Cuomo Furore Bianco, sleep on the beach until 15:30, swim, repeat. It is the Amalfi Coast without the performance. For solo dining in Positano, a long lunch at Da Ferdinando followed by an afternoon on the sand is one of the most restorative ways to spend a day on the Mediterranean.
Getting There — The Details
Da Ferdinando is accessible two ways: the five-minute coastal path from the right side of Spiaggia Grande, or the free wooden boat that departs from the Spiaggia Grande jetty roughly every thirty minutes in season. The boat is worth taking for the arrival alone — approaching Fornillo from the water gives you the view of the cliff and the beach from the perspective the early twentieth century painters chose. Reservations for beach chairs should be made by phone the morning of your visit in July and August. The restaurant itself does not require advance booking for lunch, but arrival before 12:30 secures the best terrace position. The complementary comparison for this experience is Da Adolfo, which requires a boat transfer to its own island beach — a more theatrical version of the same idea. Da Ferdinando wins on ease; Da Adolfo on exclusivity.
What to Order
Begin with the buffalo mozzarella salad — the Paestum production is superior to what most restaurants on the coast use, and eating it with a glass of cold Prosecco at noon on a beach in the Tyrrhenian sun is a small and perfect happiness. The seafood risotto is the main event; order it for two if sharing, as the portion for one is generous but the communal version with the full mixed catch arrives with greater ceremony. The grilled tuna secondo, when available, is cleaner and more satisfying than the pasta. For dessert, the homemade lemon sorbet with a shot of limoncello poured into it at the table is not a listed item but will be provided if you ask. Nearby in Positano, Lo Guarracino offers the other great casual terrace experience between the beaches, reached by the cliff path from the opposite direction.