Chez Black

Contrary to other reviews — THIS IS NOT A TOURIST TRAP!!!
This is our 2^nd trip to Italy but our first in Positano. Hubby and I are foodies so we do extensive research where we are going to spend our euros and while we read some foodie trip blogs about Chez Black, one couldn’t help wonder at first glance if it might be a tourist trap because of its ocean front location and lots of tourists (esp Americans) dining here. We gave it a try and we enjoyed our meal so much, we had to return for my birthday dinner! The seafood is abundant and fresh and their portions are generous! The service is top notch as they always made us feel like VIPs! Our favorite server was Pepe and Frederico, and Rafael serenaded me with a birthday song opera-​style! Their delizie al limone (sponge cakes filled with lemon cream which you can find everywhere in the Amalfi region) was the best I’ve ever had — you must have one here! (you’re welcome!)
For the two meals, we had the pasta with cuttlefish ink, mussels with cherry tomatoes and garlic, marinated anchovies, spaghetti scampi e frutti de mari (pasta with seafood — they put an adorable bow-​tie bib on you because of the delicious mess you’ll make), baked whole seabream fish wtih potatoes and tomatoes (served and filetted table side). We actually wanted to order more both times but Pepe graciously told us to decide after we’ve eaten if we should order more because he expertly knew that we had ordered enough. Our eyes are usually bigger than our stomachs. :)
If I have one constructive feedback is that they don’t have enough olive oil and balsamic vinegar bottles for every table. However, we noticed this in most restaurants in Italy. Unlike in the US, each table gets a set per table. We enjoy drizzling olive oil in pretty much everything, and the hubby can’t have his panne (bread) without olive oil & balsamic vinegar. In any event, we got our oil & vinegar every time we asked for it and even requested they leave it at our table for the duration of our meal and they gladly obliged.
Trust me, it is NOT a tourist trap — this place will more than satisfy your palate and the ambiance and people watching is wonderful!

Excellent location and friendly staff. Very good food but definitely not in my top list of restaurants while there. The spaghetti with fried zucchini was great and the pizza was good (not great). Overall great location and good food.

Great spot right on the water. The ambience was great, as was all the staff.
The seafood and the vegetables tasted very fresh and everything was cooked to perfection.
To top off the experience, they had a ‘restaurant dog’ who was just the cutest and friendliest thing around!

This is the place you think of when imagining dining in Positano. Outfitted in mint director’s chairs and gold chandeliers with direct views of the ocean, the place is gorgeous. I also enjoyed that they lend some pomp and circumstance to the dining occasion. The sea urchin pasta is presented beautifully, and I kind of loved the bibs you could buy for lobster.
I had the grilled calamari, which was a respite from the heavy foods I’d been eating in Rome. It was prepared very simply with olive oil and lemon. It was a touch rubbery, but still very tasty. My husband had the ravioli, which was a perfectly simple dish.
While this place is probably a bit touristy, I enjoyed it very much and think others would as well.

Amazing service and staff! Such a friendly ambiance also beautifully decorated. My friend and I came here on both nights during our stay in Positano (confession: partly it was because I developed a crush on host/​owner? ;P) but also because we had such a great dinner experience our first night. The food was delicious and the staff was so attentive and friendly, our waiter Antonio was super nice! Really appreciated his service.
Food:
Portions are very generous so just make sure you order accordingly
Throughout the the two nights we ordered the tomatoes and mozzarella as our appetizer cuz I mean c’mon your in Italy so of course. We tried the burrata on the first night as well very refreshing
Dinner entrees we tried were the spaghetti and meatballs and grilled mixed vegetables. (FYI the grilled mixed veggies is a small plate) however both tasted great. Second night I had the special pasta w/​cod (very good).
My favorite part however was of course the dessert .the server will bring you a cart of like 6 different cake options and asks you how big or small of a piece you want! The first night we tried the chocolate covered profiteroles (so good it was like eating profiteroles in a dark chocolate pudding!) Second night we tried the tiramisu– my favorite I’ve tried so far.
Overall this place is very nice if your visiting Positano. You won’t be disappointed. The restaurant gets busy on wknds so make a reservation if u can, but if you have to wait a bit for a table it’s not too bad, they give you a small complimentary glass of champagne ;)

Ate here while visiting Positano. Located right on the beach and was very busy. Service was friendly and pretty quick even though they were slammed. Food was pretty decent. I just ordered a pizza and thought it was pretty good. Pretty cool to see pictures of all the celebrities that have been here over the year. They charge a service fee, which was the only restaurant we encountered that with in Italy, so that was disappointing. For being in such a touristy area not sure it can be beat out by any of the others.

We couldn’t be more pleased with this place. The food is amazing, the staff are so attentive, and the ambiance is better than any other restaurant in Positano.
To add to their helpful nature – we had an incident where a fellow diner stole our bag with laptop in it. We came back the next day to see if it had been turned in and it hadn’t, but the owner took us upstairs and spent 1.5 hours with us looking at camera footage. We saw the whole thing happen on camera. He provided us with all necessary steps to ensure we could report it appropriately to the police and gave us complimentary glasses of prosecco while we mapped out our next steps.
Highly recommend this place!!! Wonderful people and food!

After trying to decide between multiple beachfront spots, we settled on Chez Black, mostly thanks to the nautical décor and sprawling menu.
We started with a bottle of local white wine, which was reasonable and quite good for about 18 euro. We tried the burrata as a starter and hands down, it was the best burrata I’ve ever tasted.
Rich, creamy, a perfect consistency and supported by fresh tomatoes and basil. Definitely the highlight of the meal for me.
Entrees — we ordered the tuna pizza and the grilled calamari. The calamari was prepared very simply — just olive oil, lemon, parsley and grilled perfectly. It was slightly chewier than some of the other calamari I’ve had, and considering we were within feet of the ocean, I was sort of surprised. The pizza was disappointing — definitely canned tuna, probably canned olives. The capers helped.
The service was fine — typical for a very touristy area, even though it wasn’t terribly busy when we sat. Heard a lot of people making dinner reservations, so perhaps that’s when it really gets cooking! For being in such a touristy area, though, not sure it can be beat out by any of the others.

After an amazing day tour of Pompeii and Amalfi Coast, my tour guide brought us here to this scenic restaurant right on the beach. We ordered a mixed salad (mediocre) and the neopolitan lasagna. So cheesy, perfect amount of beef, and the sauce was so flavorful! Didn’t leave me feeling overly satiated or guilty for eating all those carbs!
Ordered the Margarita pizza to go – crust was too thin IMO. Service was great! Nice family owned restaurant who made sure I had everything I needed.

Chez Black is an amazing restaurant and a must if your vacationing in Positano
Location is right on the beach.
Great service
Great dinner
You need to visit

This is a great place to dine near the beach, on the other hand, the flies are very bothersome. They are this way in almost all of the outside restaurants in Positano, so nothing against this restaurant, but be ready to be shooing them away from your food. The grilled swordfish was fresh and delicious, but the chicken salad was a weird mix of sweet corn, carrots, raw fennel, huge leaves of lettuce and dry chicken. I would suggest sticking with the seafood or pizza. The prices were very average for the tourist area near the beach, but it was fun to watch the painters crafting their canvas landscapes and listening to the ocean. They also own Rada, which is supposed to be a much better quality of food and higher prices.

Can’t go wrong with a heart pizza! This place was quite hard to find through Unilocal.Especially the streets are very zig zag. This is along the beach.

The food, service and ambiance are excellent. I had been here several years ago and I found that none of that had changed, in fact, I think the service was even better than before.
My friends liked this place so much they kept asking to go back and if they had had their way they probably would have eaten every meal here. But hey! It’s Italy and there are plenty of places to try so we limited our visits to only three!
The pizza was delicious. And the pizza maker was so sweet, he even made us a complimentary pizza in the shape of a heart! (guess it pays to be 4 women alone) Our server was so sweet, we asked for him each time we went in and he took great care of us.
As for what to order, the pizza with the spicy pepperoni was a winner as was the lobster spaghetti.
While they have an extensive wine list– the servers are also quite informed and can find you a great bottle for a reasonable price.
The manager (owner?) was on site and stopped us on the way out to point out a couple of other places that we should check out which was really thoughtful.
Definitely one of my favorite places in Positano!

I came here for a late lunch while on a tour of the Amalfi coast — it was recommended by our Walks of Italy tour guide — prices are in range for a place on the beach but not all that bad and service is fast and they are versed fairly well in English (though they don’t have to be but it is nice) — they have everything Italian — from pizza in a wood burning oven (thicker than in Rome) to regular traditional pasta dishes to past with seafood and all sorts of fresh seafood dishes.
I had baby octopus in a thick tomato reduction and fried zucchini slides with mint and vinegar — loved the Octopus and the veggie dish was just okay. Otthers in my group had past with meatballs and pasta with fish. We did try some shots of the local Limoncello at the end of the meal and it is great, though not too different from what I make at home back in Arizona but still, a nice experience.
Oh, I also had a small bottle of wine made from graps on the Amalfi coast — the small bottle is about 10 Euro and it is about 2 to 3 glasses of wine — I found it to be lovely and wish I had bought a bottle to take home — as it is branded as Chez Black wine I think you can only get it there.
All in all, good food, service was friendly, and they are right off the beach on the Amalfi coast so what is not to love. :-)

The food was great. Highly recommend getting the fried anchovies to start. The oysters were good, not great, no sure worth € 5 each. 4 of us ordered at least 6 entrees as we needed to sample everything. We got the block cuddle fish squid ink pasta and it was excellent. Also recommend the sea food platter to start. The red prawns were ok as well not worth ordering. We didn’t eat until 10:00 but they were already out of several of the seafood dishes
We were not as impressed with the desert selection, but overall still worth a 4.5 star review.
The ambience we great as was the service. I would go back.

Chez Black is in a very active location with a great view of the beach. Had a quick lunch which included ravioli and a margarita pizza. Both items were well prepared. We didn’t have seafood but it looked to be fresh, difficult to say for sure, and displayed well on the plate.
I’d recommend Chez Black among the other beach-​front restaurants in Positano.

Absolutely nothing bad to say. For a restaurant in such a crowded location with so many tourists, I was not expecting top-​quality food, but that is just what Chez Black provided.
First of all, the bread was good, which is a rarity at Italian restaurants (usually it’s cold and hard). My balsamic vinegar veal was delicious, as was my dad’s sea bass. The service was very quick, the employees were so friendly, and the atmosphere/​view was beautiful.
Highly recommended.

Top notch food on the beach, yay! I thought they used more oil than is needed, as the seafood was obviously fresh, yet still dang good. Everything around and in the place looked awesome.
Octopus salad was a pile of wide, thin slices, oiled and seasoned, with greens and lemon on the side. Great stuff. May’s version of squid ink pasta was accompanied with mussels. Yum; here I get the oil because of the pasta. Katie had prawns in her seafood pasta that were amazing, yet her dish stood out for having more oil than needed for the components.
For dessert we choose the dark chocolate covered balls that were raved about by the Australian sitting next to us, but they ended up just being cream puffs. I’ve never really liked them, and living in Milwaukee I get to eat a bunch of serviceable ones for much cheaper. So disappointing end.
Side note: afternoon visit, and our server took at least an hour break. That’s OK as sub waiter stepped in perfectly, but the cute «stray» dog who had been given the beach edge captain’s chair to sit on, then had no where to sit and look extra cute as the guy sat there and smoked.
Not outrageously priced considering the location beer, cocktails, water, and local wine were also greatly enjoyed by us after our long hike to Positano. If I go back to Amalfi Coast, I will eat here again.

Chez Black is the perfect restaurant when you’re strolling along in Positano for lunch and when you would like beachfront dining at night. My family and I sat on the terrace and it was perfect. In early April it can be a bit chilly in the evening, not to worry, Chez Black had standing heaters to keep the diners warm.
We had pizza for an appetizer (that came out shaped as a heart!) and I had the most delicious spaghetti in a fried zucchini sauce… Omg!!! My husband got the sea bass and liked it as well.
Definitely worth a stop– for lunch or dinner– equally special and it will be delicious!!!

Beachside dining. In Positano! Yes, you are probably paying for part of that with your meal so you should probably dine during the lunch or early evening hours to get the most of it. That being said, the food here is still pretty good but still a little pricey and too heavy-​handed on the seasoning with the pasta dishes.
Aside from our pasta dishes we ordered the buffalo mozzarella with tomatoes as our starter. It was excellent, especially with the superb olive oil and balsalmic they provided. Our mains were the squid ink pasta with cuttlefish and the seafood pasta (you have to do some seafood pastas when you are on the shore of the bountiful Mediterranean Sea). The first few bites were quite good and they are pretty generous with the amount of seafood in each dish, but it was really over-​seasoned to the point that it made it a little hard for the both of us to finish our plates. Luckily our house white wine helped cut into the saltiness.
Service was friendly and attentive for the most part. Come early, like noonish (that’s early for Italian lunch), to have a nice, comfortable area to enjoy without a crowd around you.