Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria

Sorrento kept on the plate

Lemon sorbet meets dry ice in Antonino Montefusco’s kitchen; as Chef at Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria in Sorrento, he keeps the city close to the pass. Antonino Montefusco was born in Sorrento, and his role here depends on that continuity rather than on distance from it. He works as Executive Chef inside a house founded in 1834 by the Fiorentino family, a hotel still carried by the family line through six generations. The cooking has the same obligation as the building: it has to hold memory without becoming a museum. Montefusco’s vocabulary is contemporary Mediterranean, but the source material remains local tradition, tightened into haute cuisine and kept clear at the edges. Coccio all’acqua pazza gives the kitchen its direct register, fish held to the logic of water, tomato, garlic, and the sea. The lemon sorbet with dry ice moves differently, using temperature and finish to shift the room for a moment. Both dishes stay within Sorrento’s reach. Neither needs to leave the cliff to make its point.

A hotel kitchen under old ceilings

The food program sits among several rooms, each with its own tempo. Terrazza Bosquet carries a Michelin star, and Montefusco’s cooking there reads the city as working material rather than scenery. Vittoria Dining Room keeps the older grammar of the house in view, with authentic 19th-century decorated ceilings above the table. The Orangerie moves toward the garden and pool, a lighter station in the same property, while the bar looks out toward the sea and keeps its own quieter rhythm. The house itself is not small in ambition, but its scale stays legible: 82 individually decorated rooms and suites, three historic buildings, and a private Mediterranean garden of 20,000 square metres planted with citrus, olive, and palm trees. Those figures matter because they shape the kitchen’s discipline. A grand hotel service has to feed different appetites without losing the hand. Montefusco’s brief is to keep the Sorrentine line audible across those rooms, from the formal plate to the simpler gesture.

The house between garden and gulf

The approach from Piazza Tasso passes through the garden before the sea-facing side of the house opens toward the Bay of Naples. The buildings hold their separate histories: La Vittoria, built in 1834; La Rivale, from 1882; La Favorita, the central Swiss-style chalet made in the early 20th century. Inside, marble pillars, frescoes, high ceilings, chandeliers, parquet, tile, and inlaid furniture set the pace before a plate arrives. The room is quiet enough for small sounds to register, the cut of service, the movement of glass, the pass finding its cadence. From private terraces the eye goes to Vesuvius, Naples, and Ischia; from the kitchen, Montefusco brings the gaze back to coccio all’acqua pazza.