Three stools, a counter barely wide enough for two elbows, and a hundred bottles of rum on shelves that once held salami and provolone — Ex Salumeria converted from a cured-meat shop into a rum bar without expanding the footprint, meaning you drink in a space so compressed that intimacy is not a choice but a physical fact. The bartender works a blowtorch, caramelising fruit before it enters the shaker, filling the narrow room with burnt sugar and citrus. The rum library spans the Caribbean, Central America, and beyond, curated with the obsessive specificity of a collector who knows Barbadian from Jamaican funk. Each cocktail is built to order in the time it takes, which in a room this small becomes a private performance.
Location
Centro Storico, Naples
Map
Insider Intel
Ask for the bartender's current favourite rum neat — the library rewards guided exploration. For cocktails, anything with the blowtorch-caramelised fruit is the house signature. A Daiquiri built with aged Jamaican rum is the benchmark. The Mai Tai variation uses house-made orgeat. If you are curious about agricole versus molasses rums, this is the classroom.
Evening from 9pm — with three stools, timing is everything. Midweek visits offer the best chance of a seat and the most bartender conversation. Weekend evenings may require waiting on the vicolo outside, which in Centro Storico is not a hardship but a standing invitation to watch the neighbourhood.
Vico Pazzariello 20, Centro Storico. Walk from metro Dante (Line 1) or Universita (Line 1). Cocktails EUR 8-12, rum tastings by arrangement. Three stools — this is not an exaggeration. No reservations; arrive and hope. The former salumeria signage is still visible. Cash and cards. The vicolo is narrow even by Neapolitan standards.