Mamma Mia! Neapolitan pizza lives up to its lofty reputation

Every Neapolitan on the planet will confidently tell you that they invented pizza, and theirs remains the best in the world. Testing these claims is one of the greatest joys of any visit to Naples.

A recently unearthed fresco from Pompeii seems to validate the first assertion. It also makes a 2,000-year old proclamation on whether you should be drinking red wine or beer with your slice. (Wine, obviously.) A venerable procession of travel writers and TV presenters have upheld the taste claims; both Stanley Tucci and the BBC’s Clive Myrie have both celebrated the primacy of this humble Neapolitan dish on recent shows. Why pizza in Naples is so much better than its incarnations in the rest of the world is, however, less discussed.

I’m going to offer four reasons why I think Neapolitan pizza is unique, before telling you about two fabulous pizzerias we tried on our visit.

FIRST is the quality of ingredients. Tomatoes from Southern Italy are the best in the world and there’s a strong argument that the San Marzanos grown on the slopes of Vesuvius are the best of those. They provoke eye-rolling delight in tomato-lovers, pull grudging admiration from those who aren’t normally keen, and make most of what we get in England taste like flavourless mush. Cheese is proper buffalo’s milk mozzarella, unctuous and soft, none of this industrially processed stuff. Basil is fresh and sharp. If you go beyond this sacred combo that comprises the margherita, you’ll get equal attention to detail. Everyone is passionate about using what’s seasonal. This is the quintessential example of the Italian belief that great ingredients, treated well, make great food.

SECOND is an elegant simplicity. This seems counter-cultural. As someone with Sicilian blood flowing in her veins, I know that most Southern Italians embrace the maxim “more is more” in most aspects of their lives. But this does NOT apply to Neapolitan pizza. There are none of the “everything but the kitchen sink” combos so beloved in America. Nobody tries to pile a whole block of cheese onto one crust. A Neapolitan pizza probably has between half and a third of the toppings you’d find in most pizzas elsewhere in the world. There is just enough, and no more, to allow you to savour and fully appreciate each element. Everything is in perfect balance. Nothing overwhelms. Which brings us to… 

… the dough. THIRD is that the dough is as important as the toppings. In so many other variations on pizza, the dough is simply a conveyance for getting the other ingredients into your mouth. It’s a wheat-based substitute for cutlery, that people often leave as uneaten crusts after polishing off the topping. Such behaviour would be anathema to Neapolitans. Done properly, it’s sourdough, made daily, and left to rise for 24 hours before use. which means it’s light and pillowy, on par with the best bread anywhere. Neapolitan pizza toppings do not go all the way up to the crust edge, as most others do, but leave a wide margin of dough. This ring or crust is known as the “cornicione”, should puff and bubble in the oven, and is far too delicious to leave behind on your plate.

FOURTH, cooking temperatures are extreme. Wood-fired pizza ovens can be found all over the world these days but few, claim the Neapolitans, get as hot as theirs. The extreme temperatures mean their pizzas cook in about two minutes. That means … coming back to the ingredients … nothing has a chance to lose its flavour in the cooking process. And, critically, the dough at the centre of the pizza is as crisp and chewy as that cornicione.

Neapolitan natives will tell you that who’s making the best pizza changes all the time, that it’s rarely the famous places, and that you should never have to pay more than €10 for a great one. These sorts of places tend not to have seating or take reservations: look for a queue, get in it, order a slice and eat it on the street. We compromised, opting for more upscale places with bookable tables in their dining rooms, but recommended by locals.

Da Concettina ai Tre Santi is on one of the main streets in Rione Sanità, a once-deprived neighbourhood in the middle of a regeneration boom. The Oliva family has been serving up pizzas here for around 70 years, but the neighbourhood’s transformation, recent investment from an Italian venture capital firm and a mention in the Michelin guide have combined to make this a destination restaurant. The interior is lively and has a fresh, quirky blend of art on the walls. The servers are cheerful and most speak English. The wine list is excellent, particularly on the local wines of Campania.

But you’ll forget all of that once you taste the pizza, which will be in front of you minutes after ordering. There’s a whole page of classic margherita options, giving you the chance to mix up your combos of tomato and cheese types. But Concettina pushes beyond the classics with a broad menu of inventive choices. I was keen to try friarielli, a local specialty that’s somewhere between cavolo nero and purple sprouting broccoli and was at the height of its season. It came on a pizza with sausage and cheese. Absolutely exquisite and incredibly rich, it was an effort to finish all four slices on the individually-sized plate but I pushed on. To leave even a bite of something that delicious behind would have been criminal. I swapped bites with friends so sampled the Margherita; some of the best tomatoes I’ve ever tasted. I would have been delighted with that option, too.

Concettina’s dining room is small and books up well in advance. But the good news is that there’s a bustling pick up window from which you can order online, or wander up and order spur-of-the-moment. Once you’re in nearby streets you can probably put away your mapping app and just swim upstream against the flow of pizza boxes being carried away. Those super-hot ovens are clearly good not just for tasty crusts, but for producing a massive turnover of profitable product.

Locals also frequently recommended Salvo, another family-run operation. This one’s across town from Sanità in the upscale Chiaia district, on the main boulevard across from the waterside park. It’s so similar to Concettina in atmosphere and quality of pizza that I honestly can’t pick a favourite.

Here, I was led once again by seasonal vegetables and went for an artichoke and ham offering. It seemed counter-intuitive that both of my Neapolitan pizza choices were without tomato, but the red stuff is not as ubiquitous in the land of pizza’s birth as you’d think. Like the friarielli, fresh artichokes have a very distinctive flavour and were in season. They also have quite a subtle taste that is easily overwhelmed by the sweet acidity of tomato. Instead, it goes perfectly with the mellower sweetness of pork and the silk of cheese. It was one of the best pizza combinations I’ve had.

We were at Salvo’s for Saturday lunch and it was delightful to see the locals enjoying themselves. This is obviously a spot for big group gatherings and we were surrounded by massive tables of families and friends all radiating the joy of life and being together. The big groups did mean the service was a bit slower here, but we didn’t mind.

You could easily eat nothing but pizza in Naples, and I would have loved to try some of the more humble, queue-up-and-eat-in-the-street offerings. But we had a busy schedule. Reservations made our days easier to plan and tables offered a welcome rest from intensive sightseeing. I’d happily return to either of these places. Ultimately, the choice is down to convenience of location. Either will give you a memorable pizza that embodies the four points I’ve laid out above and proves why, though the whole world makes pizza, its origin point in Naples has an edge.