Gelateria Bar San Giorgio

Gelato by the cone on the piazzetta

The order at Gelateria Bar San Giorgio is gelato, taken at the counter and eaten on the move. It sits on Piazza Martiri dell'Olivetta, the small square where Portofino's harbour meets its ring of pastel houses, so the walk from the counter to a view of the boats takes about ten paces. It works as a gelateria and a bar in the Italian sense, which means ice cream in cups and cones on one side and coffee and cold drinks on the other, with no kitchen, no bread counter and no pastry programme behind it. In a village where almost everything else is a long lunch, that is the whole utility: something cold, quickly.

A counter, a queue, and the harbour behind you

The format is the familiar Italian one. You approach the counter, choose flavours or a drink, and carry it out. There is no table service ritual to plan around and little reason to stay indoors when the piazzetta is the reason to be here at all. Tables outside look over the harbour, which in summer means yachts, day boats and a constant crossing of shoppers, hotel guests and walkers coming down from Castello Brown or heading up toward the church of San Giorgio on the headland. Among the luxury restaurants and boutiques ringing the square, this is the light option, and the one that takes five minutes rather than two hours.

Paciugo when a cone is not enough

For anything larger than a cone, the local word to know is paciugo, the Ligurian gelato sundae that turns up along this stretch of coast and is the natural step up from two scoops. Otherwise the approach that any Italian gelateria rewards applies here: ask what is freshest, take two flavours rather than four, and keep the order simple enough to eat while walking. The bar side covers the rest of the day, from a coffee before the boats fill up to a cold drink in the afternoon when the square is at its busiest. Nobody comes to Portofino for a dessert counter, but the village is small and the streets go uphill, and a scoop eaten on the piazzetta is one of the few things here that can be done in passing.