14 of the best places to eat in Naples

Louise Matthews

The things of videos, cinematic Naples lives to consume.

But there is significantly far more to southern Italy’s iconic metropolis of epic pizza than scoffing pizza margherita at Da Michele like Julia Roberts did in the 2010 movie Take in Pray Adore or frequenting the pizzeria where Sophia Loren flipped ‘n fried dough on screen in the 1950s.

Taking in out in this noisy, seething Naples, spun from grassroots custom and the sizzling Mediterranean sun, is the first locavore day. Procuring for seasonal veg, fresh seafood, Italy’s silkiest buffalo mozzarella and pungent spices at a market is as instinctive to Neapolitans as scratch cooking and not squandering a crumb.

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Scoffing fried fish on a avenue corner from a brown paper cone or sharing snack-fueled aperitivi (pre-meal drinks) at sunset is constantly in vogue. Neglect recent traits or buzzwords like “street meals”, “small-circuit” and “sustainability”. Fiery Naples has often done a grand career of adhering to its own procedures – and that features catering to vegans and vegetarians, traditionalists and the unorthodox, prince and pauper with a dazzling feast of previous-entire world osterie and trattorie, good-dining eating places, cheap-as-chips friggitorie (fry shops) and, of program, genuine pizzerias straight off the silver display.

Choose your pizza topping dependent on the year: artichokes, asparagus and leafy greens in April and May perhaps, sun-spun eggplant and volcanic San Marzano tomatoes in summer season, tart pink radicchio in December.

From leading pizzerias to restaurants serving the top seafood dishes, listed here are Naples’ pretty most effective areas to consume.

1. Concettina Ai Tre Santi

Sink your teeth into the city’s chameleon of a gritty, tough-lower neighborhood wherever Neapolitans wouldn’t even set meals a ten years ago at La Sanità’s hippest pizzeria. The Oliva loved ones have been whipping up dough in this article for 70-odd decades, but it’s the imaginative spin of visionary younger pizzaiolo Ciro that morphed his family’s business into gourmand hot spot  – and underdog La Sanità into an not likely foodie hub. Pair an artichoke-stuffed pizza-dough bun or artisanal pizza with a nearby craft beer or modest-generation Campanian wine to encounter Neapolitan paradiso on earth.

People in the street crowd around a doorway to a restaurant waiting for a table
Try Naples’ iconic meaty sauce any working day of the 7 days at Tandem © ColorMaker / Shutterstock

2. Tandem

Thank heavens for Tandem where focused epicureans can tuck into the extraordinarily abundant and meaty flavors of ragù napoletano (Naples’ meat and tomato sauce, manufactured with beef minimize in chunks alternatively than minced like bolognese) any working day of the week – not just on Sunday as city tradition dictates. Bit by bit simmered on the stove for hrs on end, Tandem’s legendary sauce seems on its ever more elaborate menu in myriad methods. Stick with tradition: atop fresh pasta or in a bowl with crunchy bread to dunk.

3. Antica Pizza Fritta di Zia Esterina Sorbillo

Thrill out on Naples’ wild contradictions with high-brow inventive opulence at pink-hued Palazzo Reale followed by lunch on the road with laborers and a chilly beer at this get-real, fried pizza joint. The initial recipe and kitchen kit used by Esterina Sorbillo (Gino’s aunt) following WWII assures the ease and comfort-foodstuff staple and hangover heal is exactly as it really should be: puffy, gentle and oozing ricotta, provola cheese and ciccoli (fatty pork lard) on initial chunk. Scoff right away or view the deep-fried 50 {ead4cb8c77dfcbdb67aba0af1ff8dfae0017fcc07a16fe7b51058939ac12c72a}-moon of pizza dough deflate.

4. Cibi Cotti “Nonna Anna”

If you weren’t blessed more than enough to be born with your possess Italian nonna, this legendary market eatery – look for the weeny, no-frills house tucked aside from picket crates of fruit and veg at protected Mercato della Torretta – is the up coming very best thing.

Shopkeepers, stall holders and office environment workers from the ‘hood just cannot get sufficient of the discount-priced trippa al sugo (tripe in tomato sauce), tracchia al ragù (pork rib ideas in gradual-cooked ragù), ceci e scarole (chickpeas and greens) and other time-honored Neapolitan classics cooked with adore, sweat and exceptional taste by Anna Pappalardo from 1968 until finally her loss of life in 2017. Her kids and nephews steer the ship with just about-equivalent aplomb. Lunch only.

5. 50 Kalò

That just about every of the 25 wood-fired pizza forms – numerous vegetarian – at Ciro Salvo’s fashionable pizzeria, footsteps from the sea in the upmarket Mergellina community, are paired with a precise excess-virgin olive oil speaks volumes. Sweet red and yellow San Marzano tomatoes are natural and artisanal pork salamis, DOP cheeses, capers, olives, artichoke hearts, garlic and uncommon Sluggish Meals-prized veg are scrupulously sourced from unbiased producers. No table reservations so get there dot on.

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A person sits at a table with a large pizza on it in a blue-and-white box
Tuck into Naples’ perfect wood-fired pizza at Gino Sorbillo © Alexandra Bruzzese / Lonely Earth

6. Pizzeria Gino Sorbillo

Roll out of the 17th-century church in Naples’ pulsating historic centre where by believers venerate a tiara-topped cranium and into this cult eatery worshiped by regional pizza aficionados. The gently charred, thick-crust pizzas, baked to chewy perfection in Gino Sorbillo’s massive wooden-fired oven, tick all the “suitable Neapolitan pizza” containers. The yeast seemingly will come from the same mom yeast employed for generations by the Sorbillo pizza-god clan.

7. Osteria della Mattonella

In the cinematic Spanish Quarter, make a day with Mamma Antonietta and her grown bambini, Massimo and Fatima at Osteria della Mattonella. Vintage pictures and memorabilia, musical instruments and a lovely kaleidoscope of 18th-century majolica tiles produce a cozy dwelling vibe. Cuisine is similarly previous-school osteria (read: unchanged considering that 1978): comforting soups, clean pasta, octopus salad, typical Neapolitan polpette (meat balls) and an outrageously good Genovese (regular Neapolitan sauce of sluggish-cooked beef, yellow onions and white wine).

8. Pescheria Mattiucci

A white-tiled interior decked out with fishing nets, enthusiast graffiti and a statue of the Virgin Mary is the evocative backdrop for mouthwatering pesce crudo – sliced uncooked fish – served at this dead-simple fishmonger’s in trendy Chaia. The Mattiucci household has been fishing and offering their day’s catch below considering the fact that the 1890s and their pairings of lemon- or orange-marinated swordfish and tuna with new fruit and veg (fennel, pineapple, all types) are rather basically phenomenal.

9. George

It is really hard to know which little bit of this Michelin-starred restaurant to rave about extra: the modern-day Neapolitan cuisine with French aptitude (outstanding sauces, 40-egg tagliolini with truffles and sage-laced Norman butter) by homegrown, France-educated chef Domenico Candela his killer nine-study course menù degustazione (tasting menu) or the rooftop garden’s passionate major-blue views of the Bay of Naples.

A dish of spaghetti with clams on a white table cloth
Some classic menus haven’t modified in Naples for many years © Paolo Gallo / Shutterstock

10. Palazzo Petrucci

Chef Lino Scarallo has Neapolitan delicacies in his blood. His father was a La Sanità butcher and sopping up sauce with a scarpetta (bread) or scoffing a finger-licking cuoppo (paper cone of fried bites) by hand is as sacrosanct to this Michelin-starred firecracker as making complex spins on timeless classics in his contemporary seaside restaurant. Walk 10 minutes alongside the waterfront from Mergellina to feast on o ragù e mare (fish interpretation of the city’s common meat sauce) and intimate sea sights.

11. Friggitoria Vomero

Graze like a Neapolitan on Naples’ most quintessential street foods up at this takeaway fry shop – a haloed 1938 vintage up the hill in leafy Vomero. Everything deep-fried in vats of sizzling oil is insanely delectable: spaghetti, pizza, egg-plant, pumpkin flowers, panzerotti (potato croquettes), arancini (rice balls) or simply addictive shells of flour-and-drinking water dough – plain or spiked with seaweed. Buy a cuoppo misto (combined cone) and devour over jaw-dropping views of the metropolis down underneath and island-specked bay over and above.

12. Mimì alla Ferrovia

Waltz into previous-globe Naples – imagine tasteful white tablecloths, frescoed ceiling, framed snaps of illustrious earlier attendees on the wall – at this unpretentious darling of an old-schooler ristorante. Emilio Giugliano (aka Mimì) opened in close proximity to the central train station in 1944 and his conventional Neapolitan menu has not transformed. Major marks for superlative stuffed peppers, parmigiana di melanzane (baked layers of eggplant, tomato sauce, basil and cheese) and spaghetti con vongole veraci (spaghetti with baby clams).

13. L’Ebbrezza di Noè

Inspite of the wickedly tempting foods and wine The Drunkenness of Noah serves, it is not likely you will depart as inebriated as Noah appears in Michelangelo’s well known exact same-identify fresco in Rome’s Sistine Chapel. Pair just one of 2000-odd wines chosen by sommelier-operator Luca with a quintessential pizza di scarola (calzone-type dough stuffed with leafy inexperienced escarole, olives and capers), paccheri fritti (fried pasta with eggplant, basil and tomato sauce) or some of Naples’ very best seafood. Aperitivo, meal or apericena (beverages-supper combo) – all three get the job done.

14. Umberto

Sluggish Food gluttons, eat your heart out. This veteran trattoria blasts you to interwar Naples with unique fittings, tobacco-stain yellow partitions and the Di Porzio family at the helm due to the fact 1916. Non-Italian speakers will cherish the in depth, properly-translated menu that flags dishes starring neighborhood Sluggish Meals products – salami and blood sausage, dried black cherries and copper-red Montoro onions, historic bean and tomato types – you will be really hard-pushed to obtain outdoors the Campania region. Tuck in.

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