Nestling in the hills above Scalea, La Rondinella is an agri-tourism restaurant that showcases the best of the local produce - their own smallholding included. It's a little hard to find, but worth the effort. It's immaculately clean. Staff are friendly, and the aimiable Italian chef also speaks English and German.
There is one (unseen) set menu each day, which ranges from €18 pp to €30 pp, depending on what dishes and drinks are consumed. If you are a picky eater, this is probably not going to suit you. For a real "foodie", however, it's great to sit back, menu-less, and just experiment with dish after dish as it arrives. Our starters ran to almost a dozen little plates, which included locally-sourced olives, goat cheese, bread, snails, ham, salami, potatoes, tomatoes, and greens. My favourite was a firey red tapenade on homemade bread. Everything was beautifully cooked, and so fresh that it zinged with taste. Rustic fare, but excellent.
We were extremely full after the starters, and had trouble choosing between the two pasta dishes on offer as "first main course". Chef solved this by serving small portions of both!
After that, we seriously couldn't manage "second main course", and we also declined dessert. The waiter seemed a little crestfallen, so I relented, and said that we might be able to manage dessert, but only if it were very tiny. He was back a few minutes later, smiling happily, and bearing a big plate containg no less than eight desserts - all of them very tiny.
At the end of the night, stuffed to bursting with high-quality local produce, we were surprised to find that the bill only came to €45 for the two of us. Fair enough, we're tee-total, so we stuck to fizzy water all night; but for the elegant surroundings, the quality of food, the efficiency and friendliness of service and (let's face it) the sheer volume of what we ate, this was an absolute bargain. We'll definitely be going back!