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Family, Food, Travel

Lo Scoglio: A Simple Family Recipe

Published on 5 minutes read
Culture
Family, Food, Travel
Words by Zachary Weiss
‘Antonia and I carry the same appreciation for tradition, for family values and legacy, and for a kind of elegant, relaxed simplicity that belies the care and workmanship that has been entrusted and passed down though generations. To turn raw materials into beauty and memories, and to capture atmosphere and emotion. That is the spirit of Carolina Bucci, and of Lo Scoglio.’ — Carolina Bucci

The approach to Lo Scoglio from the water is unassuming. From the bay of Nerano it appears to only be a simple pier that juts out into the sea, shaded by white awnings that could easily be mistaken for a boat’s sails. That’s where, if you are lucky to have arrived from the water, the captain cuts the engine and you await, the waves lapping the sides of the hull as a small blue and white skiff pulls up, emblazoned with the words “LO SCOGLIO.” Like much of the Amalfi Coast, the sea acts as the front door of this famed, family-run enclave.

A charming young man maneuvering the outboard motor of the skiff beckons you to climb in for the short ride to the pier, and as you ascend the stairs into the outdoor dining room you can hear the jovial din of a lunch scene in full swing. There is chatter and laughter and the sound of a bottle of wine settling back into its ice bucket to stay cold in the summer heat. Lo Scoglio is the center of gravity for the town, and a required destination for holidaymakers who come to the region en masse from near and far.

It’s all overseen by Antonia De Simone, whose family has run this restaurant since 1958. “When I close my eyes and think back to my earliest memories of Lo Scoglio, the first feeling that comes to me is that of being suspended between the sky and the sea,” she recalled during our recent conversation. “It has always been a place that gives me that sensation, as if I were floating on the water, in perfect balance between nature and time.”

The story of Lo Scoglio begins with her grandparents, Antonietta and Tommaso, who opened the restaurant not because they dreamed of running a business, but because they just wanted somewhere to put the vegetables. The family had land, with farms scattered across the hillsides above the bay, growing tomatoes and lemons and the wild arugula that still grows along these slopes. “The scent I remember most is this wild arugula, carried on the sea breeze and mixed with the salt air,” Antonia reminisced of her childhood spent between the farms and the restaurant. “It’s intense and unmistakable.” With this beautiful bounty at their disposal, her grandparents built Lo Scoglio as its stage. Since then, the approach hasn’t changed.

I myself have tasted that home grown supply chain over the course of several afternoons; beautiful, languishing afternoons that have no need for an end apart from the sun dipping behind the mountains. On the table are red prawns pulled from the water just beyond the terrace, dressed in almost nothing so the sweetness of the shellfish does all the work. A regional specialty, Spaghetti alla Nerano, combines a simple trio of deep-fried zucchini from the farm, fresh basil, and heaping helpings of cheese. The main event though is usually one of the stunning large white fish, which are kept in a nearby tank, caught that morning and prepared tableside. It’s plated with a beautiful sliced and salted tomato salad so bright and fresh that it’s a deserving co-star.

This is, Antonia told me, the dish her family eats together most often during their quiet evenings. “Dinner is our moment of peace. It’s the time when my brother, my sister, and I finally sit down, slow down, and reconnect. At the same time, it’s also our daily meeting. It doesn’t happen around a boardroom table. It happens over this simple tomato salad, and somehow that simplicity says everything about who we are,” she said.

While the buzzing lunch scene may be what Lo Scoglio is known best for, it is this family dinner where the real character of the place comes from. Antonia runs Lo Scoglio with her brother Tommaso, the chef, and her sister Margherita, who handles the business. She describes Tommaso as the calm one, the person who keeps the kitchen steady on the most hectic days, and Margherita as the one who keeps everyone’s feet on the ground. Of herself she is a bit more self-deprecating. "I'm the oldest sister, and like any self-respecting older sister, I’m definitely the most annoying one,” she quips.

The restaurant has hosted its share of notable names over sixty years. The Agnelli family were among the first regulars. The playwright Eduardo De Filippo wrote poems for Antonia’s grandmother, which the family keeps as one of their most treasured possessions. Bruce Springsteen has spent enough time here that he was once mistaken for a member of the wait staff, wandering table to table asking guests if everything was to their liking, only for the guests to realize afterward who had actually been checking on them.

Left: Antonia’s grandmother, Antonietta. Right: Poems written for Antonietta by famous playwright Eduardo De Filippo.

The list of tales like these could go on and on, but Antonia is careful not to let the celebrity stories define what the restaurant is for. What she comes back to, again and again, is her grandparents’ idea of hospitality. The idea that everyone at the table should feel equally welcome, whoever they are.

“Just a few days ago, while we had a world-famous celebrity dining at the restaurant, I met two wonderful women who had travelled all the way from Venezuela,” she told me. “They were staying in Florence and had taken four different buses, spending more than eight hours getting here, simply to have lunch at Lo Scoglio, and I remember stopping for a moment and thinking, isn’t that extraordinary? People often talk about VIPs, but what could possibly be more important than two people who choose to dedicate an entire day of their journey just to spend a few hours with us?”

Guided by this spirit of warmth and egalitarian hospitality set by past generations, Antonia and her siblings are a study in Italian sprezzatura, the sort of effortless grace that has attracted so many of us to this small, unforgettable corner of the world. “I truly began to appreciate this place because of traveling, which feels sort for paradoxical,” Antonia said. “Traveling is wonderful because it opens your mind. It introduces you to different cultures, and my siblings and I were fortunate enough to experience it from a young age, but it was precisely through traveling that I realized how special the place we come from truly is. Time seems to stand still here, and it’s where a kind of simplicity still exists that is hard to find elsewhere in the world.”

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