Does it get any better than this? I mean, really.

Italian seafood lunch al fresco, perfect weather, best table, overlooking the sea and the beach at a little town that feels as if it ought to be overrun with tourists … but no one this year has yet gotten around to visiting.

Three-plus hours, four courses, two bottles of wine, and sun-sun-sun for those who prefer it … the shade of a convenient umbrella for those of us who need it … great food and no rush to be anywhere or do anything or to get the heck up from the best table in the restaurant.

You may have heard it said that “you can’t get a bad meal in Italy.” That isn’t quite true. In the tourist-choked places, you can manage a bad meal in Italy. Florence, for example. Venice, certainly. Even Rome.

Out here in the little villages, though … pretty much “No. You can’t get a bad meal.”

Fresh ingredients, simple ingredients, modest prices, friendly but unobtrusive service. Modest portions. Manageable prices. Does that about cover it?

We made a trek down to the end of the peninsula to a little town named Marina del Cantone, looking for a specific restaurant that Leah and her friend Liz had visited, by boat, while staying in Positano a few years back, over on the more famous part of the Amalfi Coast.

They loved that lunch so much that Leah was determined to return … though she wasn’t quite sure of the name of the place, let alone where it was … other than it was accessible by boats that could tie up on the dock at the end of the outdoor seating plaza.

She began investigating it and realized … yes, it was the “Lo Scoglio” ristorante (and tiny hotel), on the beach at Marina del Cantone … a town that consists of a square, a couple of hotels, about three restaurants, a parking lot and two narrow strips of rocky beach.

OK,  let’s cut to the chase: What did we eat?

We started with the rocket salad with cherry tomatoes, dressed with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and lemon juice. In that photo I’m serving it to everyone. The tomatoes were bursting with flavor, and the combination with spicy rocket … was a great start to the event.

Next up, the one clear disappointment of the meal — the fresh seafood platter that Leah and Liz remembered with great fondness from their previous visit.

Sadly, this time … it came without sea urchin. They had been looking forward to eating the nervous system of the urchin (I guess that’s the only edible part). However, our server explained to them, mi dispiaci, that the water had been too churned up that morning (rain the previous night) to collect urchins from the seabed. So the “platter” was a gigantic bowl of ice with a smattering of raw mussels, clams and three oysters. This cost 30 euros, and was both small as well as disappointing and overpriced, without the urchin.

Things got better, and fast.

For the main dish, two of us ordered the house speciality — spaghetti with zucchini and a garnish of basil. Two others opted for spaghetti with clams (con tanto aglio — extra garlic) and one order of scagliatelli with frutta de mare.

Let’s work our way through them.

The spaghetti with zucchini was perfectly al dente, seasoned with thinly sliced zucchini and made hearty by the application of a local parmesan. I had this. Wonderful.

The spaghetti with clams came in a nice garlicky broth with clams that had been in the sea a few hours before. Fresh and savory.

And the scagliatelli … thick-cut, hand-made noodles about four inches long and three-eights of an inch wide, slightly chewy, with mussels and clams and tomatoes. No real sauce, and none needed.

What’s notable about pasta here … it isn’t drenched in sauce. We’re talking about delicate flavors. Each of the ingredients speak for themselves.  And lots of lemon.

Then came the cheese course. Four cheeses: parmesan, local provolone, mozzarella and scamorza … wonderful in their own right, but garnished spectacularly with strawberry jam … and a heavy, grainy honey … that I was eating plain. It was that good. I have never had better honey.

By then, dessert was just not a realistic option, though we had checked to see that their gelato was made on the premises (it is) … and instead we went for one piece of cake caprese — made of just chocolate and nuts. No flour. The server thoughtfully brought the one piece sectioned into five tiny squares, all of them standing on powdered sugar with a garnish of strawberry paste on the side of the plate.

Two bottles of wine. Did I mention this? A bottle of the local white named Falanghina, a semi-dry fruity white native to Campania that we drank here all week, and a perfectly serviceable bottle of house white with the cheese.

So, hours and hours of slowly savoring wonderful stuff, in beautiful weather, with great scenery, interesting conversation, charming wait staff that left us alone (perhaps a bit too alone, sometimes) … in a spring breeze set to a background sound-track of the sea washing up on the beach.

A couple of us declared it to be “the best lunch of my life.” Not even with a “one of the” qualifier in front of it.

And it was a short drive from Massa Lubrense. Technically on the Amalfi Coast (the other, south, side of the peninsula, but no more than 25 minutes from our place.

Pretty much killed the day. We came home and mostly napped. But it was worth it, and memorable and everyone there would love to be able to go back someday — especially if they are serving sea urchin. Everyone other than me, when it comes to the urchin and its nervous system.

For more photos of the day/afternoon, look under the “Massa Lubrense” set on Leah’s flickr account. Most of those pertaining to the lunch are on the lower half of the first page.

Some of those will give you a sense of the beaches and the cliffs surrounding the little marina, and the wonderful spring day and memorable lunch we happened into.