Where to eat in Capri during a boat tour (and why it changes the entire experience)
What to do in Capri Italy during a boat tour comes down to a decision that most people only think about once they’re already on the water: where to stop for lunch.
Not in the review-site sense of which restaurant has the best reviews. In the practical sense of which restaurant fits inside a day that began at 9:30 from Marina Piccola and still has the afternoon ahead of it.
The answer depends on where the boat is at midday, how much time you want to spend off the water, and what kind of pause you want the meal to be.
Here is what the choices actually look like, one by one.
In this article:
- Why lunch is not just a break during a Capri private boat tour
- Best restaurants in Capri reachable by boat
- La Fontelina: lunch at the foot of the Faraglioni
- Il Riccio: a longer pause near the Blue Grotto
- La Canzone del Mare: an afternoon at Marina Piccola
- Lo Smeraldo: the practical option close to the port
- Da Tiberio: when you want a meal without the spectacle
- Where to eat in Capri during a boat tour: how to choose
- Da Paolino: the evening option that completes the day
Why lunch is not just a break during a Capri private boat tour
On a Capri private boat tour, the day moves through a sequence rather than a schedule. Three hours pass: the island circuit, the grottos, the Faraglioni passed between rather than admired from far away.
Then comes a moment when the engine slows and the boat looks for a mooring. That moment is lunch, and what you do with it shapes the rest of the afternoon.
A quick stop on land with a return time set in advance is one approach, useful when the goal is to keep moving.
A proper meal at a restaurant with direct sea access is another, and it asks for more from the day in exchange for giving more back.
The table is booked through the skip-the-line service included in the private Capri experience, the queue doesn’t apply to you, and the afternoon belongs to the group rather than to a queue ticket.
As we wrote in the article on the Capri boat tour, arriving by sea at a place like La Fontelina is not the same kind of arrival as walking down from the Piazzetta.
The angle is different. The light is different. The day reads differently from there.
Best restaurants in Capri reachable by boat
The best restaurants in Capri reachable by boat are not always the most famous addresses on the island.
They’re the ones that fit inside a day on the water: tables you can reach from the deck or with a short transfer, kitchens that are worth the stop, schedules that can hold a group of six or twelve without falling apart.
Five names cover most of what works:
- La Fontelina, at the foot of the Faraglioni, reachable by private boat or by the restaurant’s shuttle from Marina Piccola
- Il Riccio, on the cliff at Anacapri near the Blue Grotto, part of the Jumeirah Capri Palace
- La Canzone del Mare, at Marina Piccola, one of the historic beach clubs of the island
- Lo Smeraldo, also at Marina Piccola, less talked about and easier to slot into the day
- Bagni Tiberio, on the northern coast at the site of Tiberius’ villa, with the restaurant built on a platform over the sea
La Fontelina: lunch at the foot of the Faraglioni
Capri beach restaurants by the sea get no more literal than La Fontelina.
The pergola sits directly on the rocks at the base of the Faraglioni, the tables are a few meters above the water, and the only thing between you and the stacks is the air.
The Arcucci and Gargiulo families have been running the place for as long as the pergola has stood there, and the menu has stayed close to what it was at the start.
The boat moors at the buoy field below the restaurant and the transfer to the table is a matter of minutes. For guests not arriving by private charter, the restaurant runs its own shuttle from Marina Piccola, which keeps the experience consistent regardless of how the morning was structured.
What you eat is what makes sense in that position: fresh fish from the morning catch, the house spaghetti, ravioli capresi, and a white sangria that has become a signature of the place, ordered as often as the wine list.
None of it tries to be more than it is, which is part of the point.
This is the lunch that closes the loop after the island circuit. You’ve just passed the Faraglioni from the water.
The restaurant is right there. Going on land somewhere else means leaving an area you’ve spent the morning building toward. Staying means letting the day arrive where it was already heading.
Reservations open in spring and the high-season weeks fill quickly.
Through the skip-the-line booking handled by Sorrento Sea Tours, the table is confirmed before the boat leaves the dock, which is the only reliable way to secure La Fontelina in July or August.
Il Riccio: a longer pause near the Blue Grotto
Il Riccio is a different proposition. The restaurant sits on the cliff at Anacapri, close to the Blue Grotto, and belongs to the Jumeirah Capri Palace.
A seasonal Dior pop-up has occupied the terrace in recent summers, which gives a sense of the register: this is a destination meal, not a stop along the way.
The kitchen leans into seafood with the kind of structure that the location demands. The Plateau Royal of raw fish opens most lunches. Spaghetti alla chitarra with sea urchins and breaded black cod are standard.
The dessert room, the Temptation Room, is the moment most guests remember, lined as it is with the full repertoire of Neapolitan pastry.
Reaching it by boat is straightforward when the morning has covered the northern coast. If the Blue Grotto visit is part of the day, Il Riccio sits naturally either before or after, and the position makes the timing work without forcing the schedule.
This is not a stop you compress. It runs longer than La Fontelina and asks the day to settle around it. Groups that want a centre of gravity for the afternoon, rather than a quick interruption, find it here.
La Canzone del Mare: an afternoon at Marina Piccola
La Canzone del Mare has been part of Marina Piccola for the better part of a century, and the place has held its position as one of the historic addresses of the port without changing what it does.
The terrace looks across the water at the Faraglioni from the side opposite to La Fontelina, which means the same rocks read completely differently from there.
The boat reaches it directly through the most sheltered port on the island, and the access is among the simplest of any restaurant on Capri.
Once you’re at the table, the sea is there, the swimming is there, and the rhythm of the afternoon stops asking to be pushed forward.
For groups whose priority is to spend more time off the boat without losing the proximity to the water, this is the address that reconciles both.
The day stays anchored to Marina Piccola, the boat stays close, and the lunch becomes the long pause around which the rest of the afternoon shapes itself.
Lo Smeraldo: the practical option close to the port
Lo Smeraldo also sits in the area of Marina Piccola, and what it offers is exactly the kind of stop that doesn’t require an event around it.
The reservation is easier to get than at La Fontelina or Il Riccio. The walk-in from the dock takes minutes. The kitchen does Caprese cooking without the mise-en-scène, which for some groups is precisely the right register.
The best use of Lo Smeraldo is structural. When the morning has already been intense and the afternoon plan is full, what the day needs is a meal that doesn’t take it over.
This is that meal. You eat well, you stay close to the boat, and you’re back on the water without the afternoon having shifted around the lunch.
Bagni Tiberio: lunch on the water above the ruins of Tiberius’ villa
Bagni Tiberio sits on the northern coast of Capri, in the bay where the emperor Tiberius built Palazzo a Mare as his summer residence.
The remains of the villa are still visible among the rocks below the waterline, and the restaurant occupies a wooden platform built directly over the sea on the same stretch of shore.
You eat with the water under the boards and the cliff of Capri rising behind you. The arrival by private boat is the simplest of any restaurant on this list.
The skipper anchors at one of the buoys reserved for guests and the tender brings you to the beach club. For guests not arriving by charter, a free shuttle boat runs between Marina Grande and Bagni Tiberio throughout the day, starting at 9:30.
The walk-in route from Via Palazzo a Mare takes ten minutes, but most guests come by water, which is part of the point.
The kitchen leans into Caprese tradition: fresh fish, the pasta dishes that the island has refined over generations, antipasti built around the morning catch.
The setting is unhurried and the room reads as a beach club rather than a stage, which keeps the focus where it belongs. The restaurant runs daily from 12:00 to 15:00 between April and September.
For groups that want a lunch directly on the water without the queue at La Fontelina or the formality of Il Riccio, Bagni Tiberio is the address that holds together both the access by sea and the quiet of a place that knows what it is.
Where to eat in Capri during a boat tour: how to choose
Where to eat in Capri during a boat tour reduces, in practice, to three questions: where the boat is at midday, how much time the day still has to give, and what kind of moment you want lunch to be.
A short guide:
- After the full island circuit, finishing near the Faraglioni: La Fontelina is the natural choice
- Around the Blue Grotto, on the northern coast: Il Riccio fits the geography and the register
- For maximum time off the boat with the water still in front of you: La Canzone del Mare
- For a practical, well-cooked meal that doesn’t take over the afternoon: Lo Smeraldo
- For lunch on the water on the northern coast, above the ruins of the Roman villa: Bagni Tiberio
All five can be booked in advance through the skip-the-line reservation service included in the Sorrento Sea Tours private Capri tour, with departures available from Sorrento, Capri, Positano, Amalfi or Naples depending on the itinerary.
The table is confirmed before the day starts. The cost of the meal is separate from the price of the tour, which is the standard arrangement for any premium itinerary on the island.
For the boats that make this kind of day work in the first place, the full Sorrento Sea Tours fleet is on the website, alongside the broader range of Private Experiences built around the same logic of slow days at sea.
Da Paolino: the evening option that completes the day
Da Paolino isn’t reachable by boat and doesn’t belong inside the structure of the tour.
Open only in the evening from mid-June onwards, the restaurant occupies a lemon grove above Marina Grande, where the trees themselves form the ceiling of the dining room and the scent of the citrus stays in your clothes after you leave.
The De Martino family has held the restaurant across generations, and the cooking stays inside Caprese tradition without trying to update it.
The seafood antipasti, the lemon ravioli, the dessert room where the homemade cakes are arranged under the trees, all of it works because none of it pretends to be elsewhere.
What Da Paolino offers is the second half of the day. The boat is back at the dock, the salt is still on the skin, and the evening needs a setting that matches the quality of what came before it.
Reservations are essential and fill weeks in advance during high season. Booked early, this is what to do in Capri Italy after a day that started at 9:30 at Marina Piccola and ended with a slow circuit of the island and a lunch at La Fontelina.
For the full picture of how a day from Sorrento to Capri actually unfolds, the article on what really happens during a Sorrento to Capri boat tour covers the timing and the structure in detail.
For the Blue Grotto stop that often shares the same morning: Blue Grotto Capri: what it actually feels like when you drift inside.
