On the third day on the island it happens to everyone: you have eaten fish at lunch and at dinner, you have had your fill of fried food and pasta with clams, and the idea of another sea bream depresses you. Re Ferdinando solves that precise problem. It has been running since 1960 on Via Libertà, a few metres from the harbour at Marina Grande, and it is a steakhouse and a fish restaurant at once: on the island it is the only real alternative to the monoculture of the sea. It has a panoramic terrace over the bay and the highest score among the harbour restaurants, 4.5 out of 5 from about 470 reviews.
Meat on an island of fishermen
Put like that it sounds like a contradiction, and instead it is the most obvious gap in the market on Procida. The menus of the island’s restaurants are almost all identical: seafood starter, pasta with shellfish, grilled catch of the day. Anyone who does not eat fish — by taste, by allergy, or simply because they have had enough of it — struggles disproportionately on Procida.
Here the grill works on meat, and that changes the make-up of the table: you can bring to the restaurant the child who will not touch fish without negotiating, and anyone who wants fish orders it anyway. On a family holiday that is a function, not a gastronomic detail.
Do not expect an Anglo-Saxon-style steakhouse, though: this is a traditional Campanian restaurant that also does meat over coals, with sixty years of trading behind it. If your yardstick is great dry-aged steaks, calibrate your expectations.
What to order
The grilled meats are the reason this address is on your list, and they are the thing to order at least once. On the seafood side, the house keeps spaghetti ai ricci on: one of the few places on the island where you find them, with the warning that applies everywhere — urchin harvesting is limited for reasons of sustainable fishing and availability has to be asked about, not taken for granted, not even in August.
One clarification is obligatory here, because I am asked about it often: no restaurant on Procida appears in the Michelin Guide, this one included. Anyone who tells you about stars or Bib Gourmands on the island is confusing Procida with somewhere else. What you find is good long-standing family cooking, which is a different thing and for a week’s holiday often a better one.
If you are looking for the island’s historic dishes, the real repertoire is elsewhere: coniglio alla procidana, rabbit the Procida way, the insalata di limoni, the artichoke preserved in oil. They are home dishes, which appear on menus intermittently: when you see them written up, order them.
The terrace and the position
The coordinates are 40.765391, 14.026930: you are above the harbour, with the terrace looking at the bay and, on clear days, the outline of Vesuvius on the other side of the water. It is a different view from the one at Corricella, which is contained and vertical: here it is open, horizontal, all wide sea.
The position is the second reason this address is convenient. You are a few metres from where the ferries land, on the flat, with no steps: if you have your return fixed and do not want to risk the climb up from Corricella out of breath, you eat here and you are down at the ticket office in five minutes. The page on ferries to Procida has the times to cross-check.
Prices and opening hours
Mid bracket, and I stop there. For Re Ferdinando there is no published average figure that I have been able to verify, and I have no intention of deriving one by converting the review portals’ currency symbols: it is the quickest way to write down a false number. The only verified prices on the island are those of Caracalé and La Conchiglia, about 40 EUR a head, and of Da Girone, between 20 and 40 EUR.
On the meat a rule applies much like the one for fish by weight: ask the size of the cut before it goes on the coals. A rib of beef is a rib of beef, and the weight makes the bill.
The opening hours stay empty on this page because I have not been able to verify them; the number is +39 081 896 8597. On seasonality I have no confirmed calendar: what can be said is that between November and March Procida closes a good deal, and that Marina Grande is the area where you are most likely to find somewhere open, because that is where the island’s people live. Off season, ring.
Sixty years at the same address
Running since 1960 means this restaurant has watched Procida change trade. In the Sixties the island lived by seafaring: the men shipped out, the families ashore, and the harbour restaurants worked mainly for those arriving or leaving. Mass tourism came much later, and in a lighter form than at Capri or Ischia. The names on the island that have crossed both eras can be counted on one hand: La Medusa, opened in 1954, and this one.
The practical consequence is that the clientele is not only passing through. A restaurant that also lives off residents has a constraint that purely touristy ones do not: it cannot afford a bad evening, because it will see that customer again the following week. It is the reason why, when I am looking for somewhere in a seaside town, I look first at how long it has been open and then at the menu.
The verdict
It is the address I keep in reserve for the second or third evening, and it almost always ends up being the one where you are most comfortable: no stairway, a terrace over the bay, sixty years of the trade and the chance to order a steak without feeling guilty. The travellers’ 4.5 out of 5 is the highest among the harbour restaurants and it does not surprise me.
If, on the other hand, this is your only evening on Procida and you want the postcard, then go down to Corricella: Caracalé for the room in the former boat store, La Lampara for the view from above. The full comparison is in the guide to Procida’s restaurants.
