A local friend that has origins in Napoli asked if we wanted to go on a Food tour of Napoli you know the answer was a resounding “yes!” So we took the 6:58 am train from Nettuno heading to Napoli. We met our friends in route and two and a half hours later we were disembarking at the Naples train station.
The first stop was to get “true” Neapolitan coffee. Our friend pointed out that each coffee bar advertised a different roaster. At the first Coffee Bar they lined up the espressos on the bar with the glasses of sparkling water. First you drink the water then you swig the espresso. It is rude to drink the water after the espresso because then you are sending the signal that you didn’t like the coffee, which of course we did like it!
The next stop was to sample the local Neapolitan pastry of Sfogliatella. The word Sfogliatella means “thin leaf like” because of the thin layers of pastry that resemble a leaf. It is a sweet pastry that looks a sea shell on the outside and is stuffed with ricotta cheese and orange zest, absolutely delicious!
There was a man in a chefs coat behind glass making each sfogliatella by hand. I pulled out my camera and started filming him, at the end I said “oh, Napoli” and he smiled warmly at me.
Now that we have had espresso and pastries it was time to journey further into the narrow streets of Napoli to reach our next culinary destination. This time it would be to get a “cuoppo” a Neapolitan fried food that is served in a paper cone. The fried foods in the cone are crocchè, stuffed potato balls and Sciurilli, fried zucchini flowers, scagliozzi (fried slices of polenta), pastacresciute (fried bread dough balls) and eggplant slices. We poked at our fried foods greedily with our long toothpicks and slurped it all up until our faces were shining with oil and our fingers glistening. We are going to have to work that off, so we ventured further down the narrow streets shining wet with new rain and the laundry fluttering on the line high above our heads.
Next up was the star of the show, pizza, true Neapolitan pizza. The pride and joy of Napoli cuisine and all of Italy. Any Italian will wax poetic when you mention Napoli pizza. They will tilt their heads back and rolls their eyes and grab their heart with a swoon. They will tell you, “oh, Napoli, it’s so dangerous, you will be pick pocketed….you will eat the best pizza …and then you will be robbed, but oh, the pizza!” Well, we are happy to report that we were not robbed. I never even felt like we were going to be robbed. But “Oh, the Pizza!” …head tilted back, eyes rolling, heart grasping and swooning…pizza.
Our friend had a place picked out for us, it was Sorbillos. Gino Sorbillo is the owner and a pizzaiolo just like his father, and his father before him. Gino’s father was number 19 of 21 kids, 18 of which still make pizza for a living. Sorbillos is on Via dei Tribunali in the historic center of Naples and is responsible for the rebirth of the street. There is an organization that was formed to just keep Neapolitan pizza pure. True Neapolitan pizza is fermented from 8-14 hours with brewers yeast, you must only use San Marzano tomatos grown on the slopes of Vesuvius (the volcano that blew its top and buried Pompeii), a drizzle of olive oil and buffalo mozzarella. It should only take two minutes to assemble and two minutes to bake in a wood fired oven. You take your seat, a bottle of Nastro Azzurro in front of you, both elbows on the table with a knife and fork in each fist. Out comes your pizza, one pizza is a serving size. It’s not presliced, you slice it up yourself. You work your way through the bubbly chard crust that is light and chewy and a little stretchy, the bottom crust is thin and covered with a light sauce and fresh Buffalo mozzarella. Each ingredient stands on its own merit, it’s different than its American equivalent but how can you argue with its legacy?
After the pizza we decided to take a brief break from our food tour to stroll through the Gallery Umberto, a public shopping gallery built in 1887 during a revitalization of Naples. We gaze up at the glass mosaic roof overhead and marvel at the beautiful ornate facade that adorns the gallery that we are strolling through.
I can picture it in its glory days in the early 1900’s before war became the reality and its oppulence faded. Now there is great interest in restoring it to its original beauty and we can see the painting has begun on the delicate “wedding cake” detail.
Having burned a few calories walking through the Galleria we are ready for Gelato. I ordered Fondante (a dark chocolate with no milk or cream) and pistachio. It was so creamy I could barely keep up with the licks to keep it from falling over like a frozen confection of the leaning tower of Pisa.
As delicious as it was, we needed to warm up after eating gelato on a cold rainy day so we ducked into a Coffee Bar/Pastry shop/Aperativo shop and ordered a Baba (no, not a ba-ba like a babies bottle but a Babà) this is a light yeast cake soaked in rum syrup in the shape of a cylinder. It has origins in Ukraine and Poland and made its way to Italy by means of French chefs. It became adopted by Naples as their own and now is viewed as a true Neapolitan pastry. We tore into our Babà with our forks and revealed the soft airy interior. The sweetness of the rum syrup lingers on our tongue as we savor this classic pastry. The guys warmed up with a little shot of whisky and soon we were back on the street.
We had met our culinary match and could eat no more but our local aficionado was a pro. He made another stop for “cuoppo” followed by a few more sfogliatelli before we boarded the train home. We thoroughly enjoyed our culinary tour of Naples and look forward to new delights that come with a new season in Italy.
For Other Great Travel Stories from Italy in our Archives:
A Morning Run in Nettuno (Published September 10, 2017)
A Visit to Castelli Romani (Published September 13, 2017)
Dinner for Six (Published October 1, 2017)
Italian Cooking School (Published October 8, 2017)
Culinary Tour of Napoli (Published November 17, 2017)
Changing Seasons in Italy (Published November 25, 2017)
Our Trip to Englands Cotswolds (Published January 12, 2018)
Cooking with Pasquale (Published January 28, 2018)
A Tour of the Garden of Ninfa (Published May 7, 2018)
A Trip to Montefiascone (Published May 17, 2018)
San Gimignano, a visit to a Tuscan Hill Town (Published June 9, 2018)
Tuscan Hot Springs of San Filippo & Saturnia (Published June 13, 2018)
