Naples is the best eating city in Italy and one of the cheapest. It is also disorganised, loud and completely uninterested in accommodating your schedule, which is part of the appeal.
Pizza, properly
Neapolitan pizza has a protected specification: soft wheat flour, a wood oven above 430°C, sixty to ninety seconds of cooking, a puffed, blistered, slightly wet centre. If you are expecting a crisp base, you have the wrong city.
Order marinara (tomato, garlic, oregano, no cheese) at least once. It is the older of the two classics and tells you more about the dough than a margherita does.
Expect to queue at the famous places, and know that a neighbourhood pizzeria with no queue is often just as good for half the wait.
Beyond pizza
- Cuoppo — a paper cone of fried things: courgette flowers, anchovies, potato croquettes.
- Sfogliatella — layered shell-shaped pastry with ricotta, eaten warm in the morning.
- Pasta e patate — pasta and potato, the most Neapolitan dish nobody outside the city orders.
- Genovese — a slow-cooked onion and beef sauce, confusingly named and remarkable.
- Babà — rum-soaked sponge, sold everywhere and rarely bad.
Neighbourhoods
The Centro Storico has the density and the noise. Vomero, up the funicular, is calmer and residential. Chiaia is the smart seafront district. All three eat well; the Centro Storico eats cheapest.
Naples also makes the best base for the Amalfi Coast — see the Amalfi Coast without a car.