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We've compiled the best of the best in The Italian Riviera - browse our top choices for the top things to see or do during your stay.
Located on the main street, this bar offers a large selection of wines, both local and from farther afield, plus delicious light fare; its umbrella-covered patio is a welcoming spot to recuperate after a day of hiking. The bar's certified sommeliers are forthcoming with helpful suggestions on pairing local wines with their tasty bruschette.
Find some of the best food in Portovenere at this airy, affordable, and casual portside restaurant. The menu is typical "Ligure," ranging from meat to pasta with seafood, and also offers farinata (fried pancake), focaccia, and pizza. The turquoise and white decor and benches with pillows for lounging create a playful, relaxing atmosphere.
Named after a locally born 19th-century pirate, this maritime-theme enoteca and antipasto bar is popular with locals and tourists looking for typical regional dishes, soups, and fresh seafood. They also offer terrific sandwiches to go, and there's a lengthy wine list.
There's usually a crowd of locals congregated at this lively bar and restaurant, often accompanied by their dogs and children. In the morning, tasty brioches start off the festivities and segue neatly into lunch. Alongside the usual range of beers and wines, the bar serves panini made to order and some toothsome pastries, while the restaurant menu has meat and seafood options as well as salads and pizzas.
If the staggering prices at virtually all of Portofino's cafés and restaurants are enough to ruin your appetite, join the long line outside this family-run bakery where you will find more affordable eats. At this takeaway spot, the focaccia is baked on-site, along with all kinds of sandwiches and other refreshments.
Considered an institution, this arched, vaulted, and simply decorated pizzeria dates back to 1887. It gets quite busy at lunchtime, with locals inside or, in summer, on the patio munching happily on farinata (a chickpea pancake and a Ligurian delicacy) and thick-crust pizza served hot out of the wood-burning oven. There's a take-out counter, too.
You'll know this focacceria and pasticceria by the line out the door, as you walk along the beach before entering the archway to the old port. This tiny spot—where you can see focaccia being baked through a window into its kitchen—specializes in Liguria’s favorite bread, farinata or chickpea flatbread (baked late afternoons from October to March) and several flavors of camogliesi (rum-filled is the original), a sweet that the shop's owner, Giacomo, invented in 1970.
