Of all the restaurants on Procida, this is the address that answers the right question: where do I eat something I could not eat in Naples? The answer is the limone pane, and Da Girone puts it on the menu in three ways — the linguine with lemon pesto and clams or mussels, the insalata di limoni, the lemon and aubergine polpette. It is on the Lungomare Cristoforo Colombo, at the Chiaiolella, with a terrace over the sea. You spend between 20 and 40 EUR a head: a verified figure, which is rare on the island.
The lemon pesto, the signature dish
The linguine with Procida lemon pesto and clams or mussels are the house dish, and they are also the reason this page exists. The pesto is made with the limone pane, which is not just any lemon: the white part under the skin — the albedo — is thick, spongy and sweet here instead of bitter. In the sfusato amalfitano or the ovale di Sorrento that part is thrown away; on Procida it is the part you eat. All of the local lemon cooking follows from this technical difference.
On the plate it means the lemon does not arrive as acidity, but as body: a vegetable cream that binds the pasta, with the shellfish bringing the salt of the sea. It is a first course that looks simple and that is in fact the most precise way of understanding why this island has a gastronomy of its own while its fish, on its own, is indistinguishable from that of the rest of the bay.
If you are on Procida for one day only and have to choose one dish, choose this one.
The insalata di limoni, explained
It is the other dish to order, and for many visitors it is a shock: what arrives is a plate of coarsely cut lemons, with the albedo, dressed with garlic, onion, oil, mint, chilli and salt. You crush them lightly with the fork, just to bring the juice out without breaking up the white part. Then you eat them, literally, by the spoonful, together with bread.
It is not a decorative side dish: it was the fishermen’s sauce, the one that went with fried fish and that you dipped the bread into. In Naples, thirty minutes away by ferry, this dish does not exist as a codified recipe, and not by chance: with a bitter-albedo lemon it would be inedible. It is the most concrete proof that the limone pane is a cultivar in its own right.
The natural season is spring to summer. The lemon ripens between October and March and the tree flowers again all year, but on the table the salad appears above all from spring to early summer. If you find it on the menu, order it without arguing.
Anyone who eats vegetarian has more room here than elsewhere on the island: insalata di limoni and lemon and aubergine polpette are two full dishes, not two side dishes in disguise.
The rest of the menu
The polpette are the other thing this place does well: squid ones, fish ones, and the lemon and aubergine ones that close the circle of the lemon argument. They are dishes for a table of people, to order in the middle and share, and that is the right way to eat here.
Then there are the fried squid and chips and the catch of the day, grilled, which is the item to settle first: it is paid by weight, so ask the price per kilo and the size. It is the only thing that can take the bill out of the 20–40 EUR range.
With the bill comes the limoncello, on the house. It is a custom of the bay, but here it has an extra point to it: made with the limone pane, it has less edge and more scent than the industrial limoncello you are expecting. It is not a tasting, it is a way of closing; but if you are doing the round of the island’s flavours, that small glass is part of the argument.
The opening hours: ring, do not trust the websites
I have to be explicit here, because this is a case where the information online does not agree: the sources publish different opening hours for Da Girone, so you will not find any on this page. I am not picking an opening time at random to fill a field: ring +39 081 896 7367 and get them to tell you whether they are open and from what time.
The phone call makes particular sense here for two reasons. The first is that the Chiaiolella lives off the beach season and shuts down before the rest of the island: outside summer, many kitchens on this marina cut their days. The second is the distance: you are on the opposite side from the harbour, and finding the shutters down after a quarter of an hour on the microbus is a wasted evening.
On the specific seasonality of this address I do not have a verified calendar, and I am not going to invent one. What holds in general is that between November and March Procida closes a good deal.
What you spend
Between 20 and 40 EUR a head: it is one of the few published and verifiable price ranges on the island, and it tells you two things. The first is that you can eat here without spending fish-restaurant money, if you stay with a first course, the polpette and a side dish. The second is that the range widens to 40 EUR as soon as the catch by weight comes into play.
For comparison, Caracalé at Corricella and La Conchiglia on the Chiaia are around 40 EUR a head, again from verified sources. None of the other restaurants on the island has a published price: when you read a precise figure about a Procida restaurant, ask yourself where it comes from.
The verdict
It is the restaurant I recommend to anyone who wants to understand what the island eats, not just what it catches. The travellers’ rating is 4.1 out of 5 from about 1,100 reviews: solid, not exceptional, and it is the most honest number to give you. The cooking is not sophisticated, and the service, with those numbers and that terrace, is in a hurry in August.
But the lemon pesto and the insalata di limoni you will hardly find anywhere else, and they are what you come for. Pair it with a day in this part of the island: the Chiaiolella beach in the morning, lunch here, the walk towards Vivara in the afternoon. For the rest of the local food there is the page on what to eat in Procida.
