Da Baracca, Amalfi, Campania

It's usually a good sign when a restaurant owner stands outside his establishment and welcomes his guests. It means he's also happy to stand up and be counted when they come to leave. The owner of blue and white Da Baracca, set in a tiny square back from the main Amalfi drag, stood next to a sign that proudly proclaimed 'since 1945' (think that meant the restaurant, not him, but it was a close-run thing) and gestured us inside.

Eating here was akin to stepping off shore for a while. Appropriate, I felt, in a place that once rivalled Pisa and Genoa in its maritime republic days. The owner gave us a captain-like welcome aboard. The waiters – swarthy, dark-haired young men of impeccable politeness – wore their shirt sleeves rolled tightly above their elbows, like sailors, and busied themselves on deck, bringing menus. Once seated, and when the restaurant tables had all pretty much filled, we set sail.

Though not exclusively fishy, the menu is mostly so. Certainly all of the most interesting dishes have maritime connections. As we read the evening's offerings, the captain brought us a platter of spankingly fresh fish to inspect, boldly claiming that he serves 'the finest fish in all of Amalfi!'

I started with what turned out to be one of the best dishes I've ever eaten in Italy. ('Dishes I've eaten in Italy' raises the bar from the outset, so believe me, this was good.) And like all the best dishes, it was simple. Homemade pasta with swordfish. Tender morsels of swordfish with black olives and capers and slivers of parmesan, tossed through short pasta. (Who said parmesan should never be served with fish? Not the Amalfitani!) There was some chilli in there too, or perhaps it was chilli oil, because the dish had a warmth to it wavering between gentle heat and fierce kick. Utterly superb. Next, an Amalfi classic, apparently – anchovy pie. Not really a pie, but a timbale of little roasted potatoes surrounded by roasted fresh anchovies, accompanied by a plate of grilled peppers. More superbness, and tiny tiny anchovy bones to crunch.

We chose a modestly-priced white wine from just-up-the-road Ravello, and we couldn't have partnered the evening's food better if we'd had a bottomless budget. At the end of the meal one of the happy sailor band brought each of us a complimentary glass of ice-cold liquirizia, like frozen cough medecine, while a guitar player strummed and sang into the night.

Yo ho ho ho, a pirate's life for me. (That's not what he sang. It's just how we felt.)

Da Baracca, Piazza dei Dogi, 12 (84011) Amalfi

Tel 089 871 285

I can forgive the restaurant for not having a web site of its own when their food and hospitality is this good. They don't need one. Thanks to Google images for the pic.

Il Polivere, Ficulle, Umbria

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time there was a pharmacist from Naples and her doctor husband who loved their jobs but wanted a place in the country to retire to when they got older. After much searching, Marta and Michele found an old tumbledown farmhouse set on a hill deep in the Umbrian countryside near Orvieto. It was called Polivere – the place of the free – because in Roman times slaves were granted their freedom here.

Marta and Michele set about renovating the house. They made cool tile floors and mellow stone walls. They built a swimming pool fed by natural spring water. And they planted a vineyard of merlot and sangiovese vines. The surrounding woods were filled with birds and deer and wild boar and, because you could only reach the house by a long and dusty track, Il Polivere was a place of perfect peace.

Marta was so happy that she wanted guests to enjoy this magical place too (and the money would help to pay all those bills), so she opened the house as an agriturismo. Time passed, until an English couple came to stay at Marta's for a few nights one summer, and found it so beautiful that they nearly cried when they had to leave. Each morning they sat in the garden eating breakfast and listening to the birdsong, while puppies played on the lawn. In the afternoon they swam in the pool and relaxed in the sun. And in the evening, when they returned from having something to eat, they sat outside in the darkness sipping Marta's home-made fennel liqueur and wondering how easy it might be to buy a farmhouse in Italy.

Two years later the English couple returned to Polivere, this time with their grown up children, who helped to harvest the grapes. This time Michele was there too, and they tasted wine and talked and ate fresh tomatoes under the clear skies of a summer night. And they all cried when they had to leave.

Like all good stories, this one has a happy ending. Marta is still there, and still welcoming guests, and the place is as beautiful as ever. If you go, though, a word of warning: watch out for the tears when it's time to leave.

Must be something in the air that affects your eyes.

Il Polivere, Strada Chianaiola, 2, 05016 Ficulle (Terni)

Tel 0763 838761

Il Polivere

Medio Evo, Assisi, Umbria

Assisi can be an uncannily peaceful place. Or it can be maddeningly busy, as we found one hot summer's day. The sight of so many nuns, monks and priests in one place can be a bit disconcerting. We had expected things to have calmed down in the evening, but at 7pm Assisi still groaned with tour groups, the car parks below the town full of supercoaches, the streets jostling with tour parties.

We found respite from all this, though, at the restaurant Medio Evo, where we dined in relaxed but refined peace. It was a bit of a surreal evening. For one thing, the otherwise elegant restaurant had a trickling fountain on one wall that would look cheap in a Little Chef. For another, we were the only diners until a party of elderly dinner-suited Italians arrived and took a table, then proceeded to photograph each other repeatedly. We never actually saw them eat, just take photographs.

We did eat, and what we ate was simple but very good. Chicken in a lemon and sage sauce, with some roasted potatoes, then a wonderful cheese selection. Good wine too. Attention is clearly paid to selecting quality produce and ingredients, and the service was knowledgeable and attentive without being overbearing. When we emerged from this oasis of calm back into the Assisi streets it had grown dark, and the crowds had thinned. Enough for us to take coffee sitting outside at a bar in the Piazza del Commune, beneath a clear and starry sky.

Something of the Assisi magic had returned to fill the empty spaces left by the crowds.

Ristorante Medio Evo, Via Arco dei Priori 4 Assisi

Tel 075 813068

Ristorante Medio Evo

Cumpa' Cosimo, Ravello, Campania

Here's one of those restaurants whose reputation goes before it. Online reviews rave over it, mostly, and pay special homage to its owner and figurehead – Netta Bottone, a formidable black-haired lady of seventy-something who seems as much actress as cook. You might gain a different impression from the reviews, but let's be clear – country trattoria full of locals this ain't.

We ate lunch here, having wandered around a Ravello bathed in Autumn sunshine, alternately sleepy then busy as busloads of tourists arrived and departed. In the interval it seemed that most of them had found their way to Cumpa' Cosimo. I imagine that lunch is the restaurant's busiest time, as Ravello, swelled with tourists during the day, quietens down in the evening, left only to its inhabitants and those staying in the town itself. So dinner here may be a calmer, if less atmospheric, experience. At lunchtime there's a slight feeling of pastiche about the place, and it's all a bit production-line: inevitable if you're feeding hordes of tourists with a bus to catch, I suppose.

We were shown through the packed and noisy restaurant to a dining room at the back. Our order was taken by a distracted waiter and served by a surly one. But the food was actually pretty good. To begin, the floral-aproned owner theatrically brought us a 'complimentary' plate of tomatoes, mozzarella and grilled vegetables. Then we ate a meaty, fennely sausage topped with provolone cheese and a cannelloni with tomato sauce. And drank a small carafe of red wine. All accompanied by Godfather-like music from a mandolin player squeezing between the tables.

One of Signora Bettone's antics deserves special mention. Instead of presenting a bill at the end of your meal, she asks each table what they had to eat and drink, then does an eyes-skyward mental calculation and pronounces the total with a shrug in a 'well it should be more, but let's just call it this amount' sort of way. Charming eccentricity or a ploy to confuse you and increase the value of your bill? Up to you. In any event, the signora doesn't seem the type to argue with. And anyway, we'd enjoyed our lunch.

I did see her sneak a look at the bill in her pocket, though, just to be sure she'd got it right. Add businesswoman to cook and actress on her CV.

Cumpa' Cosimo, Via Roma 46, Ravello

Tel 089 857156

Lots of reviews, but strangely no website of its own that I can find. No camera with me either when we visited, so thanks to Google images for the Ravello pic. No, that's not Netta Bottone, but maybe one day she'll have a statue of her own.

Stella Maris, Amalfi, Campania

Everything in the town of Amalfi draws you to the sea. The main road through the town runs precariously alongside it, the bus terminus overlooks it, and from the harbour a myriad of boats ply the coastline. Even the roads high up in the old village tumble inexorably down to it. They say that if you drop a lemon anywhere in Amalfi, it will end up in the sea. Actually they don't say that at all, I've just made it up. But you get the idea.

Inevitably in such a tourist town, restaurants, pizzerie and bars cluster around the sea too, displaying their menus in English and German, as well as Italian. Our instinct tells us in such situations to move back, leave the tourists to it and seek out smaller, more traditional and authentic, and probably less expensive, eating options deeper in the town. But you have to be careful, or sometimes your instinct can simply make foolish food snobs of you.

The Stella Maris is a case in point. It's a largish place set on stilts above a dark, gritty beach, dotted with sunbeds and umbrellas. There's a small interior restaurant, a larger covered terrace and an open terrace of flapping canopies. Four of us arrived early in the evening. Well, more late afternoon, really, but after an early start and a long day, the first of this particular trip to Amalfi, we just needed good food and then comfortable beds. Maybe a walk through the town in between. We set our culinary expectations to average. But we were wrong.

We ordered a bottle of wine, which came with a basket of bread and a bottle of water, and quickly disappeared. As did any worries or misconceptions about the quality of the food, when our meals arrived. A mixed fry starter – with crisp pieces of fish, potato and fish croquettes and seaweed – was excellent. So was a tagliatelle with scampi, cherry tomatoes and rocket. And the fritto misto di pesce included especially delicious pieces of delicate octopus. The food was well-cooked and presented and generously portioned, the service laid back but efficient.

At first I thought the owner was a little on the surly side. But by the end of the evening we were chatting wholeheartedly and he was our new best friend. We watched the sun set over the bay of Amalfi and felt the temperature drop as darkness enveloped the plastic-shrouded terrace of the restaurant. A complimentary limoncello staved off the cold.

Prices were a little steep. But not as steep as the subsequent climb through the town to our hotel, swaggering like pirates, awash with octopus and prawns and seaweed and wine.

Stella Maris, Viale della Regione, 2-00100 Amalfi

Tel 089 872463

Stella Maris

I didn't get a chance to take a photo, so thanks to the restaurant's website for the picture above.