Maria Grazia is a restaurant in Marina del Cantone, the beach of Nerano. It’s the place where, in the 1950s, spaghetti alla Nerano was born.
The story goes like this: Prince Caravita di Sirignano, whom everyone called Pupetto, a regular, showed up one evening after the place had already closed. His friends dared him to make dinner. In the kitchen, with Maria Grazia and the women who worked there, he threw together what was on hand — fried zucchini, probably set aside for the next day’s scapece, pecorino, caciotta. He won the bet. No one imagined what came next.
The one who tells the scene is Signora Esterina, who was in the kitchen that evening and today runs a restaurant of her own in the bay.
Maria Grazia is the place where the dish was invented, and nobody else can say that. But the recipe, however it got out, has spread: today nearly every restaurant in the bay makes it, and makes it well, at the same price.
Coming here means eating where it happened. It doesn’t mean eating better.
Two things almost everyone tells as certain, and that certain they are not. Here we keep them apart — it’s the anachronism that holds the whole story of the dish together.
In Nerano the exact recipe stays secret. But one fact is certain, and it’s worth more than the secret: Provolone del Monaco did not exist in the 1950s. It was rediscovered in the 1980s and earned its DOP status in 2010. The original version used pecorino and caciotta. Which means nearly every "original recipe" in circulation contains an ingredient that wasn’t there at the start.
Some sources say Maria Grazia — the mother of Donna Rosa — founded the place in 1901, to feed the fishermen and travelers already coming to the coast. That doesn’t contradict the 1950s: the restaurant had been there half a century when the dish arrived. But the arithmetic of the years, like the recipe, doesn’t always add up.
Marina del Cantone is about forty minutes from Sorrento by car, along a narrow road. Parking is paid, with published rates estimated at roughly 10 to 25 euros, and it fills up by nine in the morning in August.
Alternatively: the SITA bus from Sorrento or Sant’Agata, or by sea in summer.
At the Maria Grazia restaurant, in Marina del Cantone, in the 1950s.
Tradition credits Prince Caravita di Sirignano, known as Pupetto, together with Maria Grazia and the women who worked in the kitchen.
Yes, family-run, on the beach at Marina del Cantone.
No. In Nerano they say it stays secret. It is documented, however, that Provolone del Monaco — today considered an essential ingredient — was not in use at the time.
Recommended always, essential in summer.
Lo Scoglio is the restaurant more celebrated abroad. Maria Grazia is where the dish was born.
Hours, seasonal opening and prices change — there’s no fixed price, and a full meal runs roughly €35–70 per person depending on the season and the dishes you order: contact the restaurant before you go. The origin story is passed down orally and the versions diverge on dates and ingredients — the page states that rather than choosing one.