Excellent service and great food as well as location. I recommend the chicken sandwich and…read morepistachio croissant!

The Bar del Porto is my favorite place to hang out in Panarea and the closest thing to a…read moreneighborhood café the island has to offer. The name of the place - The Port Café" in Italian - is no accident. Getting off the ferry or the hydrofoil it's the first place you run into morning or night, and usually my first cappuccino breakfast of my visits to Panarea I have right here, just after we hand our bags off to one of the golf-cart taxis owned and operated by Angela and her family. The cappuccinos and croissants are good, the sandwich selection good enough, they know how to do basic cocktails well and they service is usually very efficient. At cocktail hour (aperitivo) they bring out a decent spread and they leave the loud music to The Bridge and the other 1st floor patio bars nearby. Like every bar or café along the tiny port the view is gougeous: sail boats, yachts and the islands of Stromboli, Basiluzzo, Dattilo and Lisca Bianca.. My favorite thing they serve are are the granite - the original Sicilian slush puppies - either "al caffe" for a second breakfast or other flavors after dinner after a stroll through town. Their granite seven years ago inspired one of my first blog posts (http://carbonara.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/slush-puppy-heaven/ ) although the guy with the cinnamon no longer works there.

We went to this place for New Year's Eve- The venue was…read moreextremely small and overcrowded -- we could barely move. It felt genuinely dangerous. The servers were walking around with bottles of champagne topped with sparkling candles, creating a serious fire hazard. If anything had gone wrong, there was absolutely no safe way to exit. We paid 80 dollars just to get in at 1 a.m., and once inside we couldn't dance or even enjoy a drink because the space was so cramped. I felt completely unsafe the entire time. We ended up standing and dancing near the door just so we wouldn't risk being trapped in case of an emergency. I do not recommend this place. A horrible experience with zero regard for safety.

If you're in the mood for a swanky high end spot, come here. It's tucked away down an alley so it…read morecan be tricky to find. We got there around 9 pm and the minimum spend was 30 euro pp. As the night gets later, the minimum spend goes up. We were sat in the beautiful garden area. Cocktails range on average 15-20 euro. Along with drinks, they served complimentary snacks to your table. They have dancing but it doesn't start until late and stays open until about 2:00 am. It's a must go to

Probably the best gelato in the area! It's situated in a charming hilltop town, Staletti, and the…read morelocals come here, so that's a sign that it's very good. They have a large outdoor patio in the back, and they have table service, so you can have a look first at what flavors they have for the day, find a table in the patio and order from the server, then enjoy the ambience outside. There are remnants of the "old town", as they call it, part of which you can see from the patio area. And if gelato isn't your thing, they have many flavors of granita as well. This is my go-to gelato place whenever I'm here on my summer vacation.