Santa Croce — Restaurant in Positano

Just echoing the below comment - usually when a restaurant has a good overall rating but a few 1 star reviews I tend to put it down to hard to please customers, but in this case they are absolutely warranted.

We arrived at 8:30 looking for a table for 7 and knew there was a chance it couldn't happen, but from the outset the men 'welcoming' us at the door seemed frustrated just by our presence. We were rudely told that we would only get a table if some other patrons left, and to come back at 9:30. This was slightly strange as there seemed to be plenty of empty tables around the restaurant (echoed in previous reviews), but we agreed and left.

At about 9:00 one of us went down to wait at the restaurant just to ensure that we wouldn't lose our place, and the waiter told them to get lost in considerably more impolite words.

At 9:30 we all went back down and the waiter cracked it at us saying that they were understaffed and couldn't handle anymore bookings. If they had politely said this at the start we wouldn't have had an issue at all and would have tried another night, so the general hatred projected by these two men was honestly just perplexing.

Go to Refugio Dei Mele up the road - double the price, but they reward you with genuine service and excellent food. Don't waste...

We stayed 4 nights in Nocelle and 3 out of those 4 we had dinner at Ristorante Santa Croce. The food was incredible. Homestyle italian cooking, I felt like I was in my Nona-in-laws kitchen in Perth. The service was hands down the most professional service we’ve had in Italy!! And the wine list. Wow, it’s got a huge selection of local wines both red and white. Paulo was our waiter and his knowledge of wine and the way he presented was no less than the classiest sommelier. He was an absolute professional and even gave us a tour of their modest but stunning wine cellar. I can not recommend this place enough. It’s local, thoughtful and professional. We had the fried zucchini flowers twice, the caprese said twice, the ravioli twice, and the gnocchi, pasta with zucchini and prawn, and pasta with catch of the day. They were all amazing! Wine wise we had a 2016 Monte Di Grazia Bianco (a skin contact natural white wine), 2010 Le Ésche Turasi (a red wine with silky tannins), and on our last night a 2017 Greco Di Tufo (a beautiful mineral and acidic...

Very nice view with decent menu options. The staff is English friendly, at a lower conversational level.

From previous pictures of the menu, can tell their menu has gotten smaller but more expensive, most likely from covid and the drop in tourism. There isn't beef carpaccio anymore, and the pasta dishes have simplified. For example, it is just seafood pasta now, no more swordfish.

Aside from the complimentary bread which was hard and chewy, the food we ordered was decent. Lamb chops were huge and potatoes rounded out the dish, so if your appetite is meat based, definitely go for that. King prawns had a nice texture from the kataifi, and the tiramisu was creamy all the way through.

I can't give 5 stars because although the food was good, they all had a little something off. The potatoes were dry and not so flavorful, and the kataifi dough overpowered the flavor of the shrimp for me. The ravioli was good, but there wasn't anything special about the flavor, it just tasted like ravioli with...