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.