Italy: a land of Elizabeth’s wildest dreams. You have the home of authentic pizzas, handmade pastas everywhere, and a strong belief in the power of bread and cheese. If you cut her open on any given day, Elizabeth’s stomach might be 60% composed of those items. But here in the homeland of Italian food, she was excited to get the highest quality possible. Taking it a step even further, Sorrento is known as one of the lemon production capitals of the world. Lemon sorbet, lemon gelato, limoncello… the possibilities are endless.
We’ll dive into the meals in exquisite detail below, but let me just get the TLDR out of the way: we weren’t disappointed. Winston, you should have joined us! Without further ado:
Pizza: Unknown restaurant just outside of Pompeii
You’ll have to forgive the somewhat ambiguous start to the food post here, because frankly I had no clue where the hell I was. As a reminder, Elizabeth, Pam, and myself were whisked straight from the dingy confines of the Naples Airport straight into a transfer car on the way through the narrow streets of Pompeii. It was disorienting and Apple Photos metadata only goes so far towards telling you where you’re eating in a foreign country.
Here’s what I can tell you: it was raining outside (basically the only rain we dealt with over the entire two weeks of lovely fall weather), which made the open patio atmosphere of the restaurant feel cozy. The food and water arrived quickly from a staff that seemed pretty well-versed on keeping the little Pompeii Piggy tourists moving through. And, to my surprise when I looked back two weeks later, this was the only pizza that we ate in our entire time in Europe.
It’s a classic Italian-style margherita pizza. There’s actually a layer of mozzarella beneath the larger globs of burrata and mascarpone, which it doesn’t feel like you always get guaranteed. WOuld have loved to see a little bit more in the meatball and basil department, but after eating a pretzel in the Frankfurt Airport it had been a while and we were hungry. Could the three of us have shared two pizzas? Absolutely. Did any of us have a prayer of finishing ours alone? No. Was it nice to pig out? Yes. Plus, Elizabeth got a very-necessary Coke to survive the afternoon.
And as a side note, I discovered you have to pay to use public bathrooms in Europe. What the hell?
Rating: 7/10
Terrazza Vittoria: Michelin-Star Restaurant Dinner
Alright, we’re going to get straight into the thick-and-thin of it really quick: Pam has recently discovered the taste for luxury. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but sometime in 2024-2025 she started working with a travel planner, Vanessa, who is verrrry good at making luxury bookings. All you need to do with Vanessa is trust her, download the Axus app, and show up to the fancy reservation on time. We love Vanessa.
That seems like a fair lead-in to what was certainly the most ostentatious meal of my life. The Vittoria was already a posh hotel, so it stands to reason that their signature restaurant would be too. I wasn’t prepared for the 11-course menu – which of course, like any 11-course menu worth its salt, probably had something upwards of 15 tastings. Starting with a tasting of some sort of bubble of something while we waited for a table. Oh, and a complimentary pouring of champagne. Would we like X, Y, Z, or just the Dom Perignon? Sure, a glass of the Dom wouldn’t kill me. If you insist.
Our dinner reservation was relatively late and an 11-course meal is not one that finishes up in 45 minutes, so the evening dragged on a bit. Combining jet lag with a food coma is one hell of a powerful duo. With that in mind, my recollection was already pretty hazy about what all of those individual course may have been or what they would have meant at the time, and months going by certainly didn’t bring the memories back any sharper. So perhaps the best way to share this elegant little “death by a dozen or so papercuts” meal would be to let each picture speak 1,000 words for me.
Here we have the quintessential course – a bunch of little somethings.
Contrary to what your mind is thinking, those little cherry tomatoes are NOT edible. The actual course is the little tomato pate thing on top of it.
Elizabeth’s favorite course: the one where they bring you bread and orange-flavored butter.
I do recall this one because it just summarized the absurdity of a Michelin-star restaurant. What you are looking at are two chicken parmesans. One is the restaurant’s normal fare (top), which is delicious. But you see, the chef wanted to try out his own take on chicken parm, and this is what we were left with to try out on the bottom (it was literally just charcoal). It was a prank wrapped in a course wrapped back in another prank which was the whole meal. I loved it so much.
Not everything is a prank. Sometimes it’s just delicious and beautiful.
We were all a little punch-drunk by the end of this meal/sociological experiment, which those five pictures alone measure out at about 2 hours of table time (the last one being near 10 pm. How do Italians stay up so late?). It felt like the meal had to be winding down – after all, that previous course was a chocolate mousse-type thing, and that was far from the only sweet course. But I still had this sense that there was a grand finale waiting amid all of the theatrics. Elizabeth excused herself to use the restroom (allowing me to notice just how much emptier the dining room had become). Meanwhile, here came one of the waiters unobtrusively across the room carrying something that looked sort of like the sorting hat from Harry Potter, only bright red. I had a suspicion…
Pam and I flagged down the waiter and asked, “Is that by chance for us?” He stammered his way through a response that basically boiled down to “Yes, but it’s a surprise”. But what was it? It was way too big for us to eat!
Elizabeth returned to the table a few minutes later. The Sorting Hat was sitting off to the side but in plain site near our table, and Pam and I couldn’t contain our snickers as we waited for the “grand reveal”. Here they came to announce to us that… the Sorting Hat was actually a model of a traditional Neapolitan cornicello, or good-luck horn. Now that I could see it closer, it was clearly a wax holder of some sort.
It opened up to reveal little desserts inside.
Poor Elizabeth could never understand why this was so damn funny to Pam and myself. I doubt this story could ever convey why it was so funny. It probably wasn’t funny unless you were really lacking in sleep after intercontinental air travel. But it was so funny. So over-the-top. So on the nose for a Michelin-star “eleven” course marathon.
Rating: 8.5/10
Breakfast: Excelsior Vittoria Buffet
If there was an award to be given for “best view for a meal” of the trip… this wouldn’t quite win, because Switzerland is something else. But it would be up there! Somehow none of the three of us got a great picture of the view from the breakfast dining room, so here’s one of of the hotel website.
When Elizabeth and I were in Iceland a few years ago, we got sort of an introduction to the European buffet-style breakfast. Unfortunately, Iceland leans more toward the English (terrible) way of doing it, serving beans and toast and yogurt and all sorts of other things. Here in Italy, we were under a proverbial horn of plenty. There were pastries as far as the eye could see. There was all of the prosciutto and cheese and bread I could ever want. There was a gigantic freaking parmesan wheel in the middle of the dining area! Elizabeth luxuriated in fresh tropical fruit and chewy bacon, two of her favorite breakfast foods. I luxuriated in a truly top-notch omelette station.
When I say we luxuriated, that is in a very relative sense. We actually were super late to our boat tour the first morning and had almost no time to eat. The next morning was a little better, but only a little. That first morning’s hustle-fest also brought one of the funnier underrated moments of the trip. Elizabeth was running late to get downstairs and sent word to Pam and myself to order her latte. In Italy, you get lattes hot, artisan-looking, and with no flavoring. There is no choice in the subject. Pam still tried to order Elizabeth a vanilla latte to push the envelope a little – and Elizabeth received a plain, unflavored latte.
Rating: 8/10
Conca del Sogno: Peak Italian Living by the Water
If you can’t tell by now, the three of us absolutely lived it up in Sorrento. Some of it was planned, some of it was the logical thing to do (yes, eat at your hotel’s restaurant!). And sometimes we just found ourselves where a local guide told us to go and had an incredible meal.
This late lunch was courtesy of our friends who took us on the Capri/Amalfi Coast boat tour. Somewhere near the far tip of the Sorrento peninsula sits a beautiful little cove and marina. Along the shelf of that cove is Conca del Sogno, a club/restaurant that specializes in making you feel like it’s 3:30 pm in Italy. There’s plenty of open-air seating by the water for a sunny and warm October day.
The staff are friendly, gregarious, and will break into song-and-dance routines at the drop of a hat. That’s not an exaggeration; our server grabbed Pam for a quick spontaneous dance between dinner and dessert. It was like being in the middle of Mamma Mia.
In addition to an incredible vibe (certainly the best atmosphere of any meal we had in Italy, and perhaps top of my life), the food itself was fantastic. Here’s a look at Elizabeth’s pasta and mine in the distance:
Don’t ignore the limoncello spritzes either. We’ll come back to those. I don’t have a picture of it, but Pam ordered the sea bass which comes served whole in a gigantic pile of sea salt (though she did request, and the staff was happy to oblige, that they fish it out and filet it for her). That sort of attention to presentation really speaks to me. And please don’t think we forgot about dessert, because we did not forget about dessert. There’s nothing in the entire world that Nolan loves more than pistachio gelato. Now make it authentic Italian gelato, and:
As the Italians say, “perfetta”.
Rating: 9.5/10
L’Antica Trattoria: Maybe Just a Little Too Much Ukelele
By the evening of October 6, it was official: the three of us were on an absolute heater when it came to food. The last three or four meals had been somewhere between “really good” and “transcendent”, and Vanessa had another banger lined up. Shortly down the road from our hotel, past several alleys lined shoulder-to-shoulder with shopping tourists (yeah, Sorrento gets pretty crowded. It was worth it to go this way though, so that I could buy my new swimsuit – with lemons! – to replace the one I left at home), we came upon a quieter street with a classy-looking establishment by the name of L’Antica Trattoria. We were quickly seated and ordering wine, looking over the menu for what promised to be another marathon dinner.
But here’s the thing: we just weren’t doing it. At a certain point, the jet lag just hits, you know? I was particularly tired after a long night of watching the Tigers lose Game 2 of the ALDS the night before, and Elizabeth and Pam (much less accustomed to horrendous sleep lifestyles than me) were just flat-out dragging. I guess some people would say that “being tired because the boat tour went on all day and we had too much fun” is a first world problem. But still, a traditional multi-course Italian dinner just didn’t sound very fun.
Still, we rallied to have some more good pasta. The nice thing about pasta is there’s like a dozen different ways to prepare it, so you aren’t eating the same thing every single time. For example, if you have some noodles with a delicious salty pork ragu, you’re going to have a good time.
I’m being a little harsh to the restaurant overall; it just unfortunately falls into the realm of “not quite memorable” on a portion of the trip when memorable food was all around it. This is by no means an unendorsement of L’Antica Trattoria. You should give it a try if you’re in the region. I’m sure the food and vibes are much better than my exhausted recollection of them!
One thing, though: if you see the guy playing the ukelele, he might just start following you out into the street after your meal. And he might try to hustle a few bucks out of you. And it might make your night a little worse.
Rating: 5.5/10
A Brief Mention of the Joys of Food on a Boat
I brought this up on the last Sorrento blog post, so there’s no real need to belabor the point. I just want everyone to know that while fresh fruit is delicious, fresh fruit on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea is incredible.
Now throw in some chilled white wine…
And we’re cooking with gas. Of course, that wasn’t the only Italian beverage our tour guides provided. Because it is apparently traditional after one takes a swim that you take a shot or two of…
All About the Lemons, Baby
Limoncello!
In fact, anything lemon-based is the correct answer in Sorrento. It’s an entire town that owes its identity to their aromatic citrus trees that grow in the salubrious oceanic climate. You could find lemon trees in the front walkway of the Excelsior, you could find them lining the streets, and you could even find them right down by the water. The lemons that grow in Sorrento aren’t the piddly little guys you see in American markets, either; these are grown-ass lemons. Go back and look at that picture above if you don’t believe me.
The good people of Sorrento know how to leverage their beverage chances from their bounty, as well. I had my first-ever sip of authentic limoncello shortly after dipping into the waters off of Capri, and another one a bit later after swimming into the cave off of the Amalfi Coast. Limoncello can be turned into a delicious spritz as Conca del Sogno showed to great effect. You can use it to add a nice bite to your water, which is necessary because Europeans don’t believe in putting ice in your water so otherwise it’s lukewarm garbage.
In fact, lemons are almost perfect as a signature food item. The only thing missing would be some way to use a lemon in the fun presentation of a dessert item.
What’s that, you say? Lemon sorbet delivered inside the lemon peel?
Elizabeth was SO excited to try this and it was SO difficult to find on our final night. And it was such a worthy capper.
That’s going to wrap up the final installment of the Sorrento portion of our European vacation. It was an emphatic arrival onto the continent for Elizabeth, Pam, and myself. I know I was feeling nervous about entering mainland Europe for the first time ever, but from the get-go the entire vacation seemed to attain an almost dream-like quality. Life isn’t supposed to be as awesome as it was for us over those 48 hours, but you couldn’t stop to marvel at it. There was just too much to enjoy.
From here, our October 7 consisted of a travel day from Sorrento that featured some of the scariest transfer driving in history. Then we were on a train, and then into one of the busiest train stations in the world, all just trying to get our bearings. It was all in anticipation of answering one of the great clauses in the English language:
When in Rome…
