Yikes, We Have Three Naples

Naples, Italy

Ah, Napoli. The home of pizza, pollution and pit stops. We hit Naples three times in two weeks: our last port of call on the cruise, a quick layover en route to Sorrento, and then another stop over between Amalfi and Altamura.  But, readers, you’ll be thrilled to see that we’re combining these stops into one Napolooza!

Best Eats:

Our only “must see” for Naples was really a “must eat,” and we did our own pizza tour of the city after cross referencing several foody and travel blogs. We found the key is to look for the “Vera Pizza Napoleana” (True Naples Pizza) certification outside of the restaurant. To be certified, the pizzeria has to have a wood-burning oven, must make their dough out of specific ingredients and knead it by hand, and the pizzaiolo (pizza maker) has to have had a certain number of years of apprenticeship.

We hit four VPN pizzerias and one uncertified place on our “pizza crawl.” The uncertified one was actually an accident because there are two Lombardis in Naples, but it was still good pizza. In every spot, we’d split the classic Naples creation, the margherita, to compare apples to apples (or mozzarella to mozzarella).  And we’d also split a beer. Not for comparison, just for fun.  The splitting didn’t win us any favor from the waiters, but we got to try twice as many places that way.

We found all the pizza to be surprisingly different than we expected – not crispy on the crust, kinda gooey in the middle, and pretty bland…but in a nice way. We followed the lead of the locals and ate the whole thing with a knife and fork, resisting the urge to cut it into triangular slices. In the center, the knife and fork was a must because the crust was so water-logged from the tomato sauce it couldn’t stand up as a slice.  But in Naples, the crust seems like more of a just a means for holding the good stuff, since we saw a lot of locals trimming away the edge crust before getting down to business.

We visited the wrong Lombardi, a non VPN pizzeria near the volcanic rock church, but it was still yummy – and since it was our first Naples pizza we didn’t know any better.  The texture was unexpected, very cheesy and with more of a stewed tomatoes consistency than a marinara sauce, but all the margherita flavors came through nicely.

Even though we’d read that Da Michele had become a tourist trap and the pizzas weren’t as good after its new-found popularity from Eat, Pray, Love, we’d still seen it ranked in the top five, so tried to check it out.  Apparently Italian National Holidays are national pizza-eating celebrations, because after waiting for nearly an hour, we still had over 40 people ahead of us, so we took our pizza business elsewhere. 

Di Mateo, which we’d heard rave reviews about, left us with a little to be desired. The pizza was less gooey than at Lombardi, but also a lot more bland and with only single piece of basil making up the margherita. But mostly it was the atmosphere that left a bad taste in our mouth – we were moved three times and ended up in a room by ourselves with most of the chairs still on tables.

The (pardon the pun) cheesiness of Del Presidente pizzeria being renamed in honor of Bill Clinton’s visit made us envision a true tourist trap, but this place actually had our favorite pizza. The crust was crispy on the outside, and the mozzarella pieces were big and totally melted. The soggy middle was still like eating pasta, but that was standard for all the Napoli pizza.

The right Lombardi probably would have been our favorite, but we ordered it to go on our way out of Naples and it lost a bit in transit, I think. Very tomatoey and with a thicker, breadier dough than the others.

Best Sights:

We spent the afternoon climbing up the steepest neighborhood ever.  We spent most of that walk marveling at how people could ever get their grocery shopping done in these houses, or grow old.  But when we got to the top of the neighborhood, we were rewarded with an amazing view over the city, complete with soundtrack.

We sadly didn’t get to Pompei on our trip to the Amalfi coast, but had hoped to see some of the casts from Pompei at the Naples Archeological Museum. We must have misread our guidebook, because the museum had a ton of artifacts from Pompei but no casts. But even without the casts, there was plenty to see, including a room of erotic artifacts, and a view right into the window of our room at the hostel next door (completely unrelated).