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Naples, Italy


MMM

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We're planning 3 days in Naples later this month and are hoping to try several of the classic Neapolitan pizza places, as well as other trattorias. Does anyone have any recent experience there? We're also venturing into Molise - Campobasso where 2 Gambero Rosso "Red" restaurants are located, and Bojano - where there's one. Ending with a night at the Torre Gaia "Wine Resort" in Campania near Dugenta. I know this is pretty much off the beaten track, but maybe someone else here has explored there?

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Trianon is my favorite place for pizza

another restaurant we enjoyed was Da Dora - some info here - sometime very charming about strolling up a residential cobbled street on a warm evening, past families getting ready to eat or relaxing after eating and then you find this unassuming little place with great food

http://viatraveldesign.com/journal/archive...09/da_dora.html

and the late RW Apple had this to say about it....didn;t know this at the time - just googled it

"Dora's spaghetti con vongole sets the standard for the whole town. It is made with dime-size clams, called vongole verace, colored a beautiful brown with cream stripes, plus olive oil, garlic and gobs of parsley. The pasta is dressed when it is blazingly hot, which helps it to drink in all the fruitiness of the oil, the brininess of the clams and the herby freshness of the parsley. Ecco! A cliche becomes a classic.

I kept ordering things, because I was alone and the plates headed elsewhere looked so good. Each dish was a study in glorious simplicity: a little heap of deep-fried calamari, flavored with a few drops of juice from a sweet-tart Sorrento lemon; four grilled scampi, their long, charred shells lending them an evocative seaside taste and aroma; a delicate little fish from Capri called, I think, a pezzogna, cooked in a spicy bouillon called acqua pazza (crazy water); and a plate of wild strawberries with perfect lemon sorbet. The waiter wrote out the name of the fish for me; it tasted like orata or another of the breams, but I can find no reference to it anywhere, not even in Alan Davidson's encyclopedic ''Mediterranean Seafood.''

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There's a lot of bad pizza in Naples. You really should go to one of the three that I've mentioned or do research for another. This is one place on earth that I wouldn't waste a meal on a mediocre pizza which is quite easy to do there. And, for that matter, almost everywhere in Italy. This is the link for the complete four page article from the "legendary" R. W. Appleof the New York Times in which he mentions all three of these and several others as well as Da Dora:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...cts%2fP%2fPizza

As he notes you are going to have to make some effort to get into Da Michelle. It is worth it.

Edited by Joe H
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Our Naples pizza experiences: Friday night - feeling very frazzled after the utter chaos of driving in Naples, we walked to a place whose name translates to "Buffalo Brothers," close to our B&B and recommended by the proprietor. Good Italian pizza, not extraordinary. Saturday lunch - da Michele. We got the Margherita with double mozzarella (on the recommendation of the policeman from Ancona who sat across from us). This is superb pizza, delicious in every way. Could not be improved upon! Sunday night most pizza places were closed so we opted for Lombardi a Santa Chiara. It's a "vera pizza Napolitana" place although with more topping choices and was very good. Clear winner - da Michele!

We also had dinner Sat. night at Da Dora. It's a friendly, bustling place with excellent seafood, and in the middle of the evening, Dora herself broke into song and serenaded her patrons with Neapolitan favorites. It's a bit expensive, but seafood usually is in Italy. Anyway we loved it.

We had 3 or 4 truly wonderful meals at small places in the hinterlands of Campania and Molise. If anyone plans a trip in that direction, I"ll happily fill you in!

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feeling very frazzled after the utter chaos of driving in Naples

to this date, I look as driving in Naples unscathed as one of my singular achievements!

We also had dinner Sat. night at Da Dora.....we loved it.

glad you liked it!

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I just returned from Naples, where I ate 13 pizze in 3 days. A common menu item in the pizzeria was the "Wurstel". It was topped with, sliced hot dogs and, provola or swiss cheese (no tomato). A variation on that, called "Pub", had french fries on top. Honestly, I regret not trying one. The Neapolitan seem to really like "wurstel americano" There were quite a few hot dog carts around the city advertising just that.

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Brandi, da Michele, Trianon, etc. Did you go to any of these? Which of these (or any other) did you like the most?

Da Michele was the first place I visited, of course. It was quite good. Found the sunflower oil on top a bit heavy though..The marinara was my preferred pizza here.

Also went to Gino Sorbillo, l'europeo di Mattozzi (pizza not so good, antipasti were great), La Chaloupa (sp?), La Pasqualina, Starita di Mater Dei, Pizzeria del Presidente, Pizzeria Salvo (outside Naples in San Georgio Cremano. Amazing crust.) Uh, I think there were more but I would have to check my notes..

Salvo had the best Cornicione, Starita (where L'Oro Di Napoli was filmed) had the best overall pizze. Oh, Sorbillo was also amazing.

Also, had an amazing meal consisting mostly of Crudo (not the americanized version) at the port in Pozuolli. The restaurant was called Ristorante Bobo. I highly recommend visiting this place if you have the chance.

We intentionally passed on Brandi and Trianon..Brandi has a reputation of being expensive, touristic and not so good. Trianon I skipped out of spite.

Most of the pizzeria we visited were based on recommendations from other pizzaiulli. There just wasn't enough time or stomach room to visit all of the pizzeria in Naples..not even if we had been there for a month!

I will post some pics when the computer is fixed.

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pizzaiulli.

If "pizzaiolo" is becoming trite (due entirely to YOU for having planted it in the Washington-area vernacular) "pizzaiulli" may have just been used for the first time in modern English conversation.

Pete Cy Youlee. Sounds like a baseball pitcher, or a country singer.

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pictures..

Those are great pictures, but I really like the second from the right. But you must tell them that they are making a Quattro Stagioni wrong, well according to this quote:

hello, what I know, and I was in ITALY for more then 35 yers, in the pizza 4 stagioni all the ingredient are mix toghether
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Da Michele was the first place I visited, of course. It was quite good. Found the sunflower oil on top a bit heavy though..The marinara was my preferred pizza here.

Last month, we spent the night in Naples before an early AM flight. We did not want to miss an opportunity to try some of the world's best pizza, so we took a taxi to Da Michele. We had two margheritas, which were quite good, although I regret not getting doppio (double) mozzarella. You just get a small handful of melted curds on the regular pie. Several people who sat at adjacent tables ordered theirs "doppio" and the proportion of cheese on those pies was much closer to what I would have expected. Don't get me wrong, the pies were delicious, but I was surprised how little cheese we had on ours. I clearly did not do enough research.

2 pizze, 2 birre, 1 Fanta: 12 Euro

Taxi ride to and from airport hotel: 25 Euro

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Da Michele is still cranking out amazing pizza. Crispy edges, dripping cheese, simple and fresh tomato sauce, a hint of smoke from the oven, complete silence followed by sighs as everyone digs in. By 7 PM you have to wait, but we were there at 6 because of train schedules and got right in. Completely worth the extra effort to get there.

My traveling companion has photos of the pizza that I will have soon (my battery died), but here's the oven.


post-3913-0-40076200-1369831484_thumb.jp

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So I'll start my Europe write-ups in Naples, mostly because I owe pizzaman an update. I relied on his tips and I intentionally just wrote down the names of the places, not what he thought, so I could make my own opinions. I was there for two days and made it to 5 pizzerias.

In the order I visited,

1) Sorbillo - I waited over an hour for a spot at 10 pm on a Tuesday, and the street was packed with lots of young locals. $2 wine next store served in the street made the wait a breeze. Quite soupy (which I don't mind), not a great cornicione, not a lot of flavor to the crust, good char, but tasted better than any other pizza I'd ever had. Especially the tomato sauce.

2) Starita di Mater Dei - walk in during lunch, and easily got a seat. Amazing cornicione, crispy and soupy (!), amazing fried items, crust could use more flavor, good char.

3) Pizzeria la Notizia - walk in during dinner, easily got a seat, but mostly because the majority of people eating there were eating in large groups. Decent cornicione, great flavor on crust, great char, pretty crispy, higher quality toppings.

4) Da Michele - walk in during lunch, easily got seat, but I'm pretty sure that's because I'm an American woman, I realized halfway through I definitely got sat before I should have. Terrific char, very soupy, decent cornicione not a lot of flavor to the crust. I'd really caution against double Mozzarella, those pizzas looked like they had a tomato bisque on top bc the extra cheese emitted so much water.

5) Pizzeria Salvo - walk in during dinner, wasn't full while I was there. By far the best flavored crust, good cornicione, good char, high quality toppings, fried pasta carbonara (! delicious), crispy. Other fried items were a step below Starita.

Overall Rankings - (the differences between these were not huge)

1. Pizzeria Salvo/ Pizzeria la Notizia - both nicer, more $$ restaurants, most flavorful crust higher quality toppings put them over the top

3. Starita - Best fried items, Great cornicione

4. Da Michele - Best char

5. Sorbillo - Was the best pizza I ever had for a total of 14 hours.

The biggest difference from these 'zas compared to the US versions for me was the tomato. Just a completely brighter, better tasting product that made all the pizzas amazing. I'm a huge tomato lover, so I don't know if everyone else will think this difference is such a game changer. I'm going to try and go to Orso or Pupatella tomorrow and see what I think now.

Special thanks to pizzaman for quickly responding to my PM and alerting me to Notizia.

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Oh and tourist tips for Naples.

Naples looks more dangerous than it is, but do your best not to look like a tourist and keep the same level of vigilance as you would in an unsavory part of DC. Castel Sant Elmo had amazing views, a decent small Art Museum (20th Cent. Naples art) and gets you up out of downtown, highly recommended. The subterranean tour is great as well. There is a train station museum by Salvo that looked like it could have been interesting. Also, crossing the street is pretty great once you get the hang of just walking into oncoming traffic.

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^ It is my understanding that safety is an issue mostly with robberies. One of my friends told me today that it is common practice at better hotels in Naples to provide guests with "disposable" watches so that the good jewelry can be left in the safe, and there will be something with an expensive name on it to be given to the thief. We got targeted by pickpockets in Rome a couple of times, but we knew what to look for, and they were unarmed. Naples is more of a risk for armed robbery.

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Sorrento... La Vela Blanca for expensive but worth it seafood.  A perfect "the parents are paying for it" kind of place.

Davide's for gelato.  Its inthe centro, past the Duomo and down to the right IIRC.  Superb fruit flavored gelati and intense citrus based sorbetti.

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Davide's for gelato.  Its inthe centro, past the Duomo and down to the right IIRC.  Superb fruit flavored gelati and intense citrus based sorbetti.  

Si, si, si for Davide!  I was in Sorrento with someone who has lived in the area all her life and she took me to Davide's.

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Wow.  So much has changed in 3+ months.  We went from Naples back to Stuttgart, and learned shortly thereafter that someone on our flight was COVID-19 positive.  We were quarantined for two weeks and emerged into this new, weird, masked world.

I'll try and recreate my memories of Naples.

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