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“What are you looking for?” a waiter in a linen suit beckons us from the sidewalk. It’s a question that in normal circumstances might invite a tailspin of existenstential angst. Except that we are in Capri. So the answer is generally “an intravenous supply of carbs and wine, grazie mille”. Right on cue, he continues, “Pasta, limoncello… love?” A tempting offer; with or without the amorous overtures. After all, it is lunch time, and the restaurant in question soars high above the Gulf of Naples – it’s limitless blues shimmering back at us like a thousand mega-watt bulbs flashing at once.
But we decline his invitation. We’re caught in the slipstream of a crowd that’s meandering towards the Villa San Michele. Skirted by gardens bursting with bougainvillea, the Villa was the dream home of Swedish physician Axel Munthe. The most intriguing discovery is an Egyptian Sphinx, crouching on the parapet at the garden’s edge. Munthe acquired the Sphinx after being inspired by German poet Jean Paul, who wrote that “like a sphinx lay the jagged Capri darkly on the horizon in the water, and guarded the gates of the bay.” Steeped in legend, the sphinx has come to symbolise the island – mythical, omnipotent, unfathomably beautiful.
Today, Capri’s bounty of dining, shopping, sea caves, lemon trees, hidden corners and sinuous laneways are still seducing visitors the world over. One such corner that screams ‘Capri’ like none other is Il Riccio, a sun-drenched day-club-cum-restaurant clasping the cliff-edge above the Blue Grotto. Holding a Michelin-star since 2013, the restaurant offers a relaxed but sublime gastronomic experience, with exquisite house-made pasta such as the Spaghetti Alla Chitarra with sea urchins and breaded cod medallions. After lunch, head upstairs for an Aperol Spritz at Il Riccio’s rooftop terrace, recently restyled to evoke the glorious ‘50s by eminent Italian architect Antonio Girardi.
“When you are there, you have the feeling of being on a boat,” Mr Girardi explains. “This is what I wanted to emphasise, the feeling of being in the middle of the ocean while enjoying a drink, the sun or just the stunning view.” Il Riccio sits under the umbrella of the island’s revered Capri Palace. Tucked away at the highest point of the island in Anacapri, it’s Capri’s only resort to boast not one but two Michelin-starred restaurants. It’s crowning glory is L’Olivo headed up by Chef Andrea Migliaccio, who cut his teeth in some of the world’s leading kitchens, from Plaza Athenée with Alain Ducasse to the L’Espadon at the Ritz Paris. Earning two Michelin stars in 2011,
Chef Migliaccio’s raw shrimp with foie gras, green apple and gin is daring and on the palate finds a perfect harmony, just like the classic fusilli al ferretto with genovese rabbit, artichokes and pecorino.
While the island has certainly changed since Axel Munthe’s heyday – when a swag of artists, and poets found sanctuary in its quiet hillsides - it remains a place of hedonistic retreat, with an inexhaustible beauty that somehow seems just out of grasp. Perhaps that’s why people keep coming back. To float above the heaviness of the world. To shout “Si signore!” with bolshy enthusiasm to any offer of pasta or limoncello or love. Just as the Russian poet Maxim Gorky said, “In Capri, I feel drunk without ever having touched wine.”