North Hampshire offers up the delights of the orient in gourmet style

Every year as we watch the final of UK Masterchef we say that we must keep an eye on the winner and check out whatever restaurant he or she opens in future. We’d never managed it, though. Such outings always seemed to require an overnight stay; not something we wanted to do just to try a restaurant. Thanks to 2023 winner Chariya Khattiyot, however, we had no excuse. She’s a local who’s just opened her new restaurant in Alton, half an hour’s drive away.

Khao Soi by Chariya has the vibrant, informal atmosphere and the reasonable price point of your local Thai restaurant, but with a sophistication of spicing that surpasses any of the attempts at Thai that I’ve tasted outside of London. (There are now, sadly, a lot of pubs churning out what they call “Thai” but are deeply average stir fries with commercial packaged sauces poured over them.) It’s also far more than Thai. Chariya’s differentiator on Masterchef was oriental fusion; starting with her Thai heritage and then weaving in elements from Japan, where she lived for a while, and Southeast Asian countries. That’s exactly what she’s serving up in Alton.

I loved the mash-up of traditions. I started with a bao bun (Chinese) stuffed with Korean fried chicken, then moved on to quintessentially Thai khao soi topped with Korean beef. To be honest, I’m not enough of an expert on any of these cuisines to be able to differentiate the origin point of those elements without the help of the menu. All I can tell you is that it was all delicious, with distinct layers of flavour and spice that I found pleasantly hot but not over the top. My husband, who is not fond of spicy food, was game enough to give it a go and thought it was “OK”. Which, given his starting point, equates to a very good from your typical British diner.

He was most impressed by the desserts, where you leave the spice behind and just get the sophisticated flavour profile. We ordered one coconut ice cream and one yuzu cheesecake and shared them. Not only were they both delicious on their own, but they worked surprisingly well together. I am generally not a fan of set cheesecakes, but Chariya manages to get a density and high-fat mouthfeel that I associate with the baked version, without the insubstantial aeration or the gelatinous firming agents than normally turn me against the set varieties.

Chariya was visible on the pass throughout the evening, in complete control. While it’s not a completely open kitchen, you can see enough to realise they’re all working at full capacity to move the food out to a packed dining room. The crowd out front, in fact, was the only negative of the evening. Perfectly understandable for a start-up restaurant, they’ve exploited every inch of space here, and it was good to see every seat filled. But the walls, ceiling and floors are all hard surfaces with nothing to absorb sound and the din was bordering on unpleasant. We needed to raise our voices to talk to each other, but we were only a few inches away from the couple on the next table, so didn’t really want to. You’ll get great food here, but it’s not a place for a quiet, romantic evening out.

If we want Oriental food in than more elegant environment, we can drive the same distance south and go to Kyoto Kitchen in Winchester. Ironically for a couple who rarely eats non-European cuisines out, we were enjoying a Japanese feast the night before Chariya’s Southeast Asian fusion. Kyoto Kitchen has moved premises since the last time we visited, evolving from a small, tightly-packed, informal spot to an entire building with elegant interiors and three times their original covers. 

While they deliver fabulous sushi, Kyoto Kitchen’s strongest suit is its chef’s menus. Because all of the dishes are shared, the more people you have, the more food you get to try. We’d loved this option for two people on past visits; it was even better with four. At just £49.94 per person for five courses, with an extra £14 for sake pairings, it’s an absolute steal compared to any Japanese restaurant in London.

You start with some lovely nibbles to fire the appetite: marinated and fried bits of chicken, parchment-thin cured salmon, vegetable gyoza. Next comes a delicate beef tataki (raw, cured) with vegetable and prawn tempura so fresh out of the fryer you need to sit and admire the presentation for a while so they can cool down. Roll on the sushi and sashimi course, displaying the knife skills of the chefs at work at the open sushi counter in back. This is where we usually concentrate our efforts at Japanese restaurants, but a tasting menu means we were building up to the stir fries … chicken teriyaki and salmon miso … with rice.

This is where tastes really vary. As a lover of spice, I’d say that these Japanese stir fries are too mild to be worth my time. Give me Chariya’s explosion of flavours any time! But the gentle delicacy of these dishes is much more to my husband’’s taste. The evening ends with a platter of fruit, dorayaki (sweet pancakes) and mochi (sticky rice parcels). It’s a well-judged balance across the five courses. You emerge full, and completely satisfied, but not stuffed.

When he heard it was our first time in the new place, the manager gave us a little tour and painted his vision for the future. There’s an enhance chef’s table experience to come back at the sushi bar. They’re developing a Japanese courtyard garden with appropriate plants and trees that will serve as a cocktail space, or even dining on warm nights. (If we ever see any of those again.) They’re also planning some hotel rooms upstairs would allow us both to enjoy that sake flight, rather than the designated driver taking a few cheeky sips. The little bit I sampled impressed me with its variety and the way it complemented the food; I’d really like to go back and indulge fully.

So, whether your taste is for spicy Asian fusion in an informal setting, or a more sophisticated take on the subtle flavours of Japan, there are some surprising choices in North Hampshire. We are a lot more than cozy pubs, Sunday lunches and Hampshire Hog roasts.

More from Milton Keynes: Art, architecture, history and drama are all a short drive away

It was hard to come back down to earth after that vibrant, high-intensity girls’ trip to Naples … especially when I was returning to the gloom of England’s wettest spring on record. Bits of my lawn still feel like I’m treading on a wet sponge, the slugs and snails are abundant, and half of my much-prized Japanese maple drowned, making what was once a perfect umbrella into a lopsided cascade. But life must go on, and holidays are only remarkable because they’re a counterpoint to the real world. 

Admittedly, my real world is a fairly remarkable one.

Even though it’s been almost 30 years since I first entered England on a work permit, and I’ve been a citizen for 18 of those, I still get a regular thrill of wonder that I live here. I used to work for years at a time to earn the money, and save up the vacation time, to assemble 12 precious days in England. Now I have an English garden out my back door, work in a Tudor Manor House and walk my dog in the ruins of a Roman city. Even the mundane is extraordinary when you live in a place with so many layers of history.

Which brings me back to much-maligned Milton Keynes. I wrote earlier in the year about how this town delivers far above its reputation. I recently spent another week in residence there; it’s my husband’s home base for the working week these days and I join him when I can. With no work or meetings in the diary last week, I devoted myself to getting the most out of my National Trust (NT) and Historic Houses Association (HHA) memberships, continuing to explore the wealth of historic sites within an easy drive of this new town. Here’s the roundup.

SULGRAVE MANOR (HHA)
If it weren’t for its American associations, Sulgrave would have little to recommend it as a tourist attraction. It is a modest place … more an enhanced farmhouse than a manor … with no original furnishings. The gardens are pleasant but not memorable. The surrounding village is small but unremarkable, and feels particularly isolated at the moment as an island in the sea of construction for the HS2 rail project. What makes this place special, of course, is that it was once owned by a family named Washington, and one of their descendants ended up doing quite well for himself in the New World.

At the turn of the 20th century a group of philanthropists on both sides of The Pond decided to buy the place, which was then near-derelict, and turn it into a centre celebrating Anglo-American ties. World War I slowed them down but they were able to open by the 1930s and the house, administered by a charitable trust, has been celebrating the Special Relationship and teaching visitors about George Washington ever since. 

There’s a small museum in a building in the service yard that will offer little new to Americans, but was popular with all the Brits I spoke to and is clearly an excellent teaching resource. In fact, there are kid-friendly displays throughout the house that make this an excellent spot to explore with younger people to learn not just about Washington and the United States, but about wider topics in 18th century history. The star site inside the museum is one of Washington’s black velvet frock coats, which is not only a lovely touch of authenticity but gives you a clear sense of what a commanding figure he must have been. Inside, curators have done an excellent job assembling interiors to give visitors a sense of what the place would have been like when the Washingtons were in residence in the 17th and early 18th centuries. It’s worth arranging your visit to catch the introductory talk that volunteers give in the main hall hourly, but the best thing in the house is upstairs. In 1995 volunteers in the U.S. and the UK worked together to create a new set of embroidered hangings in for the bed in the great chamber. They are spectacular. Flora, fauna, people and buildings combine to illustrate country life and visions of America in the Elizabethan period. There is even a turkey. The kitchen and the formal drawing room are both attractive, and the gardens are worth a stroll, but it’s the bed you’ll remember.

ASCOTT (NT)
The Rothschild banking family has had a long association with this part of the Midlands, most famously at palatial Waddesdon Manor. Ascott (top photo) is less than 20 miles away from that blockbuster, but it feels much further when it comes to scale, style and awareness. Like Sulgrave, Ascott started life as an enhanced farmhouse, but the Rothschilds expanded on an epic scale. In the late 19th century they turned this into a hunting retreat, mostly used for weekend house parties. It has the profusion of gables, leaded windows, decorative detail and clipped topiary that comprised the Victorian fantasy of “Merrie Olde England”, and reminds me a lot of what the Astor family did at about the same time down at Hever. 

The Ascott you see today, however, is more a product of the inter-war years. The Rothschilds of that era were still rich, but nobody could afford vast staffs of domestic servants any more, and they wanted a quiet family home rather than a party palace. So they tore down a big chunk of the earlier building and re-decorated to suit their needs. It was a triumphant marriage of wealth and good taste. You only get to see five rooms, a long hallway and a museum room for their porcelain and china collection, but every painting, piece of furniture and decorative detail is perfect. I was particularly taken with the dining room, where they wanted to tile the walls with 17th century Dutch ceramics to match the art they would hang there, but there weren’t enough in existence. So craftspeople pressed lines into the plaster to mimic tiles and painted such accurate versions that you would swear you’re looking at the real thing. There’s a comfortable yet spectacular sitting room that doubles as a gallery to show off a collection of antique Chinese pottery that I suspect the Chinese government would pay a fortune to get back. The library makes you ache to grab a book and sprawl on its over-stuffed, down-filled cushions while surrounded by Old Master canvases. 

You’re not allowed to take any photos inside the house ... I've borrowed one off the web ... because it’s still very much a family home, given to the National Trust with strict provisos about the family remaining in control. Thus Ascott has more of a feel of a Historic Houses Association property: more intimate, alive and human. This is also why the gardens here are so exciting. The family has continued to add to them over the years, enhancing the original Gertrude Jekyll design (including a sumptuous long border ablaze with purple on my visit), with an Italianate sunken garden from Arabella Lennox-Boyd in the 1990s, modern sculpture injected sensitively throughout, and a new, landscape-based design by Jacques and Peter Wirtz. The grassy mounds, swirling paths of water and groupings of trees might not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s exciting to see a garden like this evolving rather than re-creating its original design year after year.  

Because Ascott is a family home its hours are more restricted than the usual NT properties and there are limited spaces to get inside. It’s a good idea to book in advance.

COTTESBROOKE (HHA)
Though its Queen Anne architecture presents a radically different face to the world than Ascott’s homely half timbering, the feel of the interiors of the two houses is remarkably similar. I suspect this is because, once again, we’re looking at a place that was heavily remodelled in the 1930s, and both homes share a legacy of being hunting retreats. Where Ascott is south of Milton Keynes, in Buckinghamshire, Cottesbrooke is northwest of the town, in Northamptonshire. This is a county so famous for its hunts that Sisi, the beloved and very sporty empress of Austria, used to travel here and stay at this house to enjoy the rural pastime. Like Ascott, it also remains a family home, though here in the completely private hands of the MacDonald-Buchanan family so opening times are much more limited and you only get in on escorted tours, during which photos are not allowed.

It is, however, very much worth making the effort to get inside … particularly if you like dogs and horses. The family owns and proudly displays one of the world’s finest collections of English sporting art. We’re talking lots of race horses, scenes of hunt meets, hunters gliding over obstacles, packs of hunting dogs and the occasional stately stag. These are displayed throughout what is very much still a family home, albeit a particularly grand one. The most surprising interior is perhaps the curving arm that comes off the main block to one of the service wings and must be one of the most beautiful hallways in the country. It serves as both an art gallery for paintings, antiques and china, and as a viewing platform for the wonderful gardens. It also gets people from point A to B. The guides are excellent, mixing anecdotes of family history with nudges towards the most noteworthy stuff in each room. Queen Anne is a perennial favourite as I browse Country Life property advertisements dreaming of enormous lottery wins. The gracious proportions and effortless elegance of this house, both inside and out, validate my choice.

I suspect most visitors come here, however, more for the gardens than the interiors. They are indeed luscious, in a traditional, dripping-with-blossom, garden rooms kind of way that is everything you want out of a traditional English patch. My problem, unfortunately, was that it was absolutely lashing down with rain. Puddles were so deep and grass so sodden your trouser legs were soaked after a short stroll. I saw a bit, but will need to return to explore the gardens on a day better suited for it.

LAMPORT HALL (HHA)
Lamport is so close to Cottesbrooke … barely 10 minutes by car … that any HHA member would be foolish not to do both in the same day if in the area. (They are both roughly an hour from Milton Keynes and practically suburban to Northampton.) I didn’t know much about Lamport but I had high expectations of its gardens, given that the most famous thing about the place is that its Victorian owner was credited with introducing the garden gnome to England. He had a famous rockery and imported the figurines from Germany to place in little scenes to add a fairy-tale aspect to this part of the garden. The guides even suggest that these horticultural vignettes inspired Walt Disney’s treatment of the dwarves in Snow White. It’s not entirely far-fetched, since Gyles Isham, who grew up in the house and would go on to be the last baronet of the family to live there before setting it up in trust for the public, worked as an actor in Hollywood at the same time Disney was developing the film.

Sadly, there’s no evidence of those historic gnomes today and the rockery has just been renovated and completely re-planted. It will look great in a few years but is a bit stark at the moment. There’s an enormous walled garden used for growing cutting flowers that was about two weeks off bursting into magnificent bloom. A bed in front of the house with a strikingly modern planting of massed alliums and wildflowers testifies to the fact that the managing trust is investing in new ideas as well as maintaining the large and stately traditional gardens. But the same rains that would torment me later at Cottesbrooke were sweeping down at Lamport, so it wasn’t a day for lingering outside.

Instead, I loitered in a beautiful house with layers of history and enthusiastic tour guides to explain it. There’s an array of styles here, from a lofty, almost-Baroque music room to an elegant, austere Regency dining room. Another room just off the main staircase is a festival of traditional panelling and woodcarving that feels as if Charles I might walk in at any moment. (A copy of one of his enormous portraits by Van Dyck hangs next to the stair.) It’s a curious place, in that it doesn’t really hang together as a house. It’s more as if you’ve wandered into a museum where each room is set up to show you a different time in history. But there’s plenty to look at and, as a volunteer at another HHA house, I was particularly impressed with all of the small touches that brought the place to life: thoughtful use of language on labels, contests to encourage visitors to tag them on social media, a room playing videos of Gyles’ films, costumes to try on, etc. I was particularly amused by the story of the Georgian-era baronet who went off on his grand tour and refused to come home for years, despite begging letters from his mother whose portrait hangs in the entry hall. Instead, the poor woman was left to run the estate and take delivery of all the goodies he sent back, including a pair of outrageously over-the-top Neapolitan cabinets that are so big they have their own room to display effectively. He nearly bankrupted the family. Luckily, a few savvy marriages soon-after refilled the coffers.

If you are doing both Lamport and Cottesbrooke, opening hours mean you’ll be hitting Lamport first. Take your lunch break at the Lamport Swan, on the A508 just past the estate’s entrance. It’s a top-notch gastropub with comfortable interiors, an attentive staff, excellent burgers, and a large bar area that welcomes dogs.

ELY CATHEDRAL
At an hour and a half’s drive, with no simple, direct route and multiple encounters with HS2 construction traffic, I can’t credibly say that the cathedral town of Ely is local to Milton Keynes. But it’s a heck of a lot closer from there than it is from my home in Hampshire. Whatever the distance, it’s a blockbuster that deserves the effort. Unless you are particularly keen on gothic architecture, English cathedrals can merge

into one undifferentiated memory of long aisles, pointy arches, fan vaulting and showy tombs. Ely won’t let you mash it in to those generalities. Just look up.

All medieval cathedrals faced the challenge of what to put over the space where the arms of their cross-shaped floorpans met, and Ely was one of several that had its original tower … the usual solution … collapse. Only Ely replaced its tower with an octagonal lantern, decorated with a host of angels and pierced with windows that let natural light flood into the centre of the cathedral. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. And if that weren’t enough to make the cathedral distinctive, it has a unique painted ceiling above the nave. That's much more modern than the octagon, done as part of Victorian renovations, but it’s completed in medieval style and colours and is, in its way, as impressive as the story cycle painted onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In Ely, it’s not the Book of Genesis but the ancestry of Christ that gets the episodic treatment. 

And if that’s not enough to differentiate Ely in your memories, it also boasts the largest Lady Chapel in England. It is, sadly, a ghost of its original self. This part of the country was at the heart of the Reformation. Oliver Cromwell literally lived down the street. Generations of rampaging iconoclasts raged through here, smashing up stained glass windows, scrubbing away paintings, and knocking the heads off the hundreds of statues that writhed through the gothic tracery in this enormous room. The resulting austerity, however, has a beauty of its own, especially because restorers made no attempt to replace the stained glass but used clear. The result is a sparklingly space of white stone and glimmering glass, bright even on a gloomy day. 

Cathedral nerds will find plenty of fine points to intrigue them as well. Ely has far more of the Romanesque in its architecture than the average cathedral, giving it an antiquity that only Durham surpasses. Curiously, it’s the exact same floor plan as Winchester Cathedral because brothers designed the two buildings and shared their work. Given that Winchester is my “home” cathedral and I know it well, it was fascinating to see how two buildings with the same skeleton can feel so radically different in their decor. Despite the vandalising reformers, plenty of attractive tombs survive. Ironically, one of the gentlemen lying in profoundly Catholic state is Oliver Cromwell’s great grandfather. A free cathedral tour is included in your ticket and well worth taking. You can add on additional tours, like a clerestory excursion that takes you to the upper-level walkways that look down into the main building, and another that takes you up into the octagon. Honestly, I didn’t plan sufficiently and just turned up without enough time to dedicate to all the wonders. I probably need to go back.

I will certainly be back to Milton Keynes in the future, as we’re settling into a pattern where I spend a week up there every six weeks or so. What’s next? Stay tuned…

Luxurious Capri offers upscale splendour and natural beauty to Naples day trippers

Where do you go on holiday when you are filthy rich? When you already have every earthly desire, can do anything you want, and money is no concern? 

If you were a Roman emperor, the answer was often Capri. And though in the age of jet travel many more exotic islands are in contention, Capri has held its appeal to the rich and famous for more than 2000 years. Fortunately, if you’re in Naples and have €56 to splash out on a hydrofoil ticket, you can get a slice of the high life for the day. 

Capri is only four square miles, with two towns, two harbours (the second one is tiny), and an eye-pleasing amount of land still given over to nature. This is, doubtless, because much of the island is jutting limestone mountains better suited to goats than human habitation. Where there is space for housing, many of the fancy villas are surrounded by lush gardens and even more humble homes tend to have space for olive and lemon trees. The whole place is a vision of glorious, bold colours: the intense blue of the always-present sea, the abundant greens of trees and vegetation, the slashes of white rock, the garish cascades of pink bougainvillea, the yellow pinpricks of lemons. There are about 13,000 residents here, a majority of those in the business of serving the tourists who often more than double the locals’ numbers. That traffic has traditionally been seasonal, with dense crowds in the summer and many businesses closing over the winter. Our late-April timing seemed perfect: everything was open and primed for the season, but there weren’t too many people around yet … especially when we got out of Capri town. 

You’ll be pitched a group tour around the island when you’re on the boat, which may be a good option depending on what you want .. but isn’t essential to experience the island. Capri town is easily accessible from the dock by funicular or an uphill hike. (I suspect a fit, vigorous type could walk it in half an hour or less.) There are bus routes crossing the island, and you can pick up boat tours in the harbour. Because there were four of us, hiring one of the island’s private taxis made sense. These have a stolid body a bit like a London taxi that can fit four to six in back, but are open topped. 

We found it a glorious way to take in the sights and sounds of the island. Yes … sounds. If you don’t get out of Capri town you’ll think of it as a place crowded with noisy humanity, but a few minutes’ drive takes you into hills silent but for the wind, birdsong and the wash of the surf below.

An hour’s hire took us up the slopes of Monte Capello, from which there are stunning views across the bay of Naples towards Vesuvius and the city, then into Anacapri town. While there are hotels, restaurants and plenty of tourist shops up here, this is also where more of the locals live. Anacapri is where I’d be looking if I were to spend the night. Then we went on to the southwestern tip of the island to take a look at the Punta Carena lighthouse; the island here feels much more like a nature reserve than a holiday resort. We doubled back on ourselves and then descended to Marina Piccola, the little port that is on the other side of the island from the big one where we landed.

Calling this a marina is a bit of a stretch of the imagination. It’s a tiny bay with a part-shingle, part-sand crescent of beach, with two other beach areas framed by rock outcrops off to one side. You need to climb the equivalent of about three stories of stairs, past a little chapel and old fisherman’s cottages now given over to shops and tour operators, to get to the water. Any more than 20 people on these side beaches and 40 on the main one would feel crowded, but when we visited it was quiet. The sea was calm, the colours Caribbean, the views of the island towering above us impressive. I could have had spent the whole day here happily had I had time and proper beach shoes. (On arrival I realised I’d been here as a 12-year-old and had the shock, after a life thus far of spending all my summers in Florida, of discovering that there were beaches comprised of something other than sand. Possibly the reason I was less impressed then than I am all these decades later.) But lingering is not on the agenda for the day-tripper.

The biggest aquatic attraction here is the Blue Lagoon, a cave with a big, domed roof only accessible by boat, at low tide on calm days, through a gap in the cliffs. Its most distinctive feature is the vibrant, almost neon turquoise that the water inside the cave glows when it’s bright and sunny outside. I went in as a child and it is extraordinary. But if you want to do this, you need to check on tours at the harbour as soon as you arrive, and that would take up a big chunk of any day trip. You can’t book in advance as it’s impossible to predict if conditions will be good enough to get into the cave.

From our slightly less spectacular encounter with the gulf of Naples, our trusty driver Franco then took us back into Capri town. He’d been a wellspring of knowledge about the island and life on it, very much a guide as well as a driver. He dropped us at the highest point of town into which you can get cars and gave us restaurant tips for places the locals would consider top quality. That’s how we ended up at La Capannina, which I wrote about in my last story.

After a very long, very leisurely lunch with some very good wines, we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and wandering aimlessly.

Capri is not a place for bargains, but it scores high on distinctive, hand-crafted items. There’s a lot of beautiful pottery, including the tradition of bells … going back to a story of a lost shepherd being saved by the sound of one … made into wind chimes. Given that the place pulls in the wealthy, there are a lot of jewellery stores, and if I were going to buy any of the locally crafted red coral I certainly saw finer examples and more interesting work here than back in Naples. There are several places you can get sandals custom-made for you in a wide variety of styles while you wait; something I haven’t seen since I splurged on two pairs in Taormina, Sicily. The prices seemed a lot higher than I remember paying, but that was a decade ago as well as a different town. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of small boutiques selling “resort wear”: upscale, elegantly casual stuff that screams class even if you’re just hanging on the beach. The girls were particularly taken with Lagrua, the shop of a local designer who makes all her own stuff on the island. Lots of deconstructed linens pairing contrasting patterns. Most was casual wear that could also make the transition into all but the most formal offices.

I, however, was saved from temptation as I’d already wandered off the main shopping street to explore the back lanes of Capri town. Within a few steps you forget the luxury beach resort and find the peace of quiet, winding paths that have probably been here since the Middle Ages. Venerable stone houses hem you in on either side, with frequent gaps in walls to allow peeks into lovely little gardens. For such a busy place, the quiet was impressive. Except for when I stumbled onto the local primary school as the students noisily tumbled out to their parents.

We’d been warned that the queues for the funicular can back up, so we left Capri town for the harbour below well over an hour before our scheduled boat. There is, naturally, a long esplanade full of shops and bars along the waterside to take advantage of the tourist traffic.

There’s no doubt that Capri is expensive. Lunch here was our priciest meal of the trip. The €20 limoncello spritzes we enjoyed harbourside compete with London’s poshest bar bills. Other than the wind chimes I didn’t resist, all the shops were well out of my price range … and the chimes were probably a foolish splurge. But I suspect there is a less expensive Capri experience, living closer to the locals, that I’d be happy to explore on another visit. Anacapri looked charming and we didn’t get near those imperial villas. The ruins are supposed to be quite impressive. I’ve heard about a cooking school up in the hills. Looks like I have yet another item for my bucket list.

Beyond pizza: Extraordinary seafood and vegetables make Neapolitan food special

You could easily spend an entire holiday in Naples eating nothing but pizza, pastries, and street food and still come home raving about the quality of the food. This, however, is a city that delivers on every culinary level, and its proper restaurants deserve some attention, too. Especially if you love fresh produce and seafood. 

Like the rest of Italy, Neapolitan food favours simple preparations of top quality ingredients. plenty of pasta, which you can have the traditional way as a starter before your meat, or as a main course. Vegetables tend to come as side dishes, not assembled onto a main course plate with multiple elements. Neapolitans join their fellow Italians in preferring what’s local, and seasonal.

Like most Italians, they’ll tell you that THEIR local ingredients are better than other regions … and here they may have a point. Abundant sunshine, gentle breezes and the notoriously fecund volcanic soil produce exquisite fruit and vegetables. Stop to admire a greengrocer’s stand here and you’ll be gazing at something just as worthy of veneration as the city’s art. They grow varieties distinctive to the area, San Marzano tomatoes being the most well known. We were visiting in high season for friarelli (known as broccoli rabe in the States), a green somewhere between tender-stem broccoli and cavolo nero, and some gorgeous, red-tinged artichokes I’d never seen before. All this fabulous fruit and veg doesn’t mean, however, that you’ll always be eating healthily. The Neapolitans are so fond of deep frying things you’d think they were twinned with Glasgow.

This is also the point on the Italian peninsula where people start to get really serious about desserts. Omnipresent Italian gelato and tiramisu has competition here from mouth-watering cakes, pastries, tarts, and biscuits. We can thank medieval Arab occupation for the love of pastry, and centuries under Spanish rule for easy access to sugar and chocolate coming in from the new world.

In fact, many argue that the magnificence of Southern Italian food is a direct consequence of thousands of years of imperialist foreigners running the place, going all the way back to Greek merchants and then to Romans established the whole coast as a destination for luxury dining.

When it came to booking restaurants in modern Naples, we had a secret weapon named Nicola. A colleague of one of the girls on our trip, he was excited to arrange bookings for us at a series of restaurants over the course of our visit so that we could try all aspects of Neapolitan dining: the pizzerias (already covered here), the trendy spots, the humble local joints and the elegant retreats. I doubt you’ll get a bad meal anywhere in Naples, but Nicola ensured that we saw all sides of this vibrant city’s food scene. My only regret? Large portions and travelling companions who were all avoiding desserts meant I left sweets unexplored at our restaurant choices.

It was the humble neighbourhood restaurant that stole my heart, and it’s the first one I’d return to. Locanda Monacone is deep inside Rione Sanità, the former rough neighbourhood now rehabilitated into a popular residential area for creative types. It’s the destination for visitors who want a more local experience. The restaurant is proud to be a long-standing occupant of the neighbourhood; contributing to its revival with local employment. Its small, ground-floor dining room is dominated by a tile mural of Catholic saints under a barrel vault. It looks like it’s been unchanged for centuries.

Our expectations were low when we arrived, however, because that charming space was taken by a private party and we were ushered to a tiny landing upstairs with three tables outside of the kitchen. We feared the staff would ignore us and we’d be wildly irritated by the noises below and the traffic of servers from the kitchen. Not at all! The staff seemed to redouble their efforts, really making a fuss over us. By the end of the evening we were dancing with them and the downstairs party-goers to the birthday boy’s live band. And the food! Weeks later, I’m still dreaming about the plate of fritto misto (a range of deep-fried delights) followed by linguini with fresh artichokes and chunks of sweet, crispy pancetta that practically brought tears of joy to my eyes. There was an exceptional local wine list and the waiters here seemed better informed about, and more willing to discuss, options than the servers at most of the more expensive places we went. I hope that somewhere in my family history there’s a link between my line and Benito Ferrara, whose label served up a wonderfully crisp, lively Greco du Tufo to perfectly counter that rich food. 

Our most elegant experience was at TransAtlantico, a hotel and restaurant nestled beneath the Castel dell’Ovo with harbour-side tables looking over yachts and the Naples seafront with Vesuvius hanging in the background. The decor is all inspired by trans-Atlantic liners of the ‘20s and ‘30s, so there’s a lovely atmosphere inside. But for most of the year you’ll want to reserve one of those outside tables. This is the kind of place designed for that romantic dream date, but it’s pretty darned good with your girlfriends, too.

As appropriate to its location, TransAtlantico is all about the seafood. Prawns in tomato sauce, tuna tartare and a dish of lemon-laced courgettes all won raves, but I’m confident my octopus on a bed of caponata was the dish of the night. Each component part … octopus, aubergine, onion, tomato … seemed the exemplar of its individual taste, yet married together for a coherent whole. If there was one dish the whole trip that made me sigh “you just don’t get fresh tomatoes like this anywhere else” it was this one. (Top photo)

It’s here that I also got to try a white wine I’ve been reading about for years: lacryma christi. If you love both wine and history, it’s hard to resist the idea that this is as close to the wine preferred by the Ancient Romans as you can get, and that it’s been praised in literature for centuries by writers as diverse as Voltaire, Hawthorne and Marlow. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a rich, heavy white … along the same lines as a well-aged Burgundian Chardonnay … but has a distinctive flavour profile of grass, white peach and a hint of almond. I was planning to bring some bottles home but the wine shop in Rione Sanità was closed on our departure day.

If you want to feel part of the hip and trendy scene in Naples, head to Cap’Alice. Like TransAtlantico, thisis in the upscale part of town along the coast, west of the historic centre. But where TransAtlantico’s position on the water looking toward all the great 19th century hotels speaks of a history of grand tourism, this place is on a small lane that rises through the Chiaia neighbourhood and screams “local”. You wouldn’t find without looking for it.

The food and wine was good, the people watching better. The fried calamari we shared as a starter was excellent. My tuna crusted in almonds was beautiful, but the report back on the other mains was competent, not exceptional. The wine list was interesting and the bottles we sampled were top-notch, but given that the place is known as a wine bar we were disappointed not to get more insight and guidance from the staf. Overall, service was really stretched and I suspect we did not get the best from the place because it was Friday night. The compensation was watching a parade of well-dressed locals demonstrating the Neapolitan exuberance for life. I’m not sure this was worth the effort to go all the way across town, but if I were staying in this neighbourhood I would try Cap’Alice again, on a weeknight, as well as sampling other places on this bustling little lane.

For dining with beautiful foreigners, of course, it was off to Capri. We enjoyed a long, relaxing lunch at Capanna in the main town, one of those understated but classic stalwarts plastered with photos of all the famous people who have eaten there. The interior is a cool, elegant mix of white walls, painted tiles, and potted plants, with tropical-themed plates hand-painted for the restaurant. Temperatures were mild when we visited but I can imagine what a refugee this would be from the blazing heat of high summer.

La Capannina is on a quiet lane a bit back from the main tourist drag; out taxi driver had tipped it to us when we asked him for food the locals really rated, then validated by the fact that one of the girls had an excellent meal ere on an earlier trip. It’s no bargain … at €71 each it was our most expensive meals on our trip … but that’s Capri. And our love of good wine means we’re inevitably spending as much on drinks as food.

For the premium price you get gracefully attentive service, an elegantly peaceful environment and glorious food. Their specialty of bufala mozzarella-stuffed ravioli earned eye rolls of appreciation around the table. The girls thought the Loggia della Sera Greco di Tufo was the best example of this local variety that we drank. I, however, was most impressed by a spaghetti dish with prawns in a lemon sauce. According to the waitress, the secret is lemoncello kneaded into the pasta. The flavour profile was so impressive I tried to make it as soon as I got home. My pasta was pretty good, but my sauce came nowhere near the light creaminess of theirs. The dish was memorable enough that I’ll keep trying. Perfecting the recipe is more likely than a quick return to Capri.

Honorable mentions:

Caffetteria Tonya: While I wouldn’t go out of my way to get here … I am sure there are thousands of places like this across Naples … Tonya was a great example of the neighbourhood Italian cafe. This is also why breakfast is so often optional in Italian lodging. Culturally, people prefer having their coffee and cornetto (the Italian version of a croissant) in public. I went here every morning, often sitting for an hour reading or sketching with my coffee. By the third day the two guys who worked there knew my order (cappuccino, cornetto filled with crema di pistacchio). It was fascinating to see the regular parade of locals, and how the barman took trays of coffee up and down the street for other shopkeepers. No paper cups here: proper glass and china even though he was crossing uneven paving stones and dodging speeding scooters. The guys knew the names not just of the locals, but of their dogs. Every day we saw these pillars of the community open up at 8am and roll up the shutters around 8pm. 

Tesoreria: This exquisite cocktail bar in the Galleria Principe di Napoli is worth a special trip, so beautiful are its interiors and so skilled its bartenders. The restaurant in its atmospheric, groin-vaulted cellars looked intriguing and I would have loved to try it, but all of our dining opportunities were booked up. Here’s yet another excuse to consider a return trip to Naples.

Head to Naples to see the original Christmas village concept, and be amazed by centuries of artistic skill

Every travel documentary or article about Naples makes its obligatory stop at the street of the nativity scene makers, and so would I. But here’s the fresh observation I’ll bring to the topic: stop thinking of them as nativity scenes and imagine instead the sprawling holiday toy towns so beloved of Americans. Because the grand Neapolitan presepe is actually much closer in spirit to a Department 56 Dickens Christmas Village than it is to the humble crèche set many families nestle beneath their trees.

Legend says St. Francis created the first model of the infant Jesus in his manger, accompanied by parents, animals, shepherds and visiting kings, way back in 1223 to give people a tangible reminder of what Christmas was all about. Even then, serious folk were worried it was becoming too much of a secularised party, ignoring the real point of the holiday. The tradition of the crèche steamed along quite nicely across Europe for five hundred years until a strange brew of circumstances in Naples triggered an explosion down a new path.

The Bourbon Kings, Charles and then his son Ferdinand IV, were keen to put their newly-created kingdom of Naples on the map. It had been spun off and consolidated from Spanish territories with their junior branch of the Spanish royal family dropped in to run things. (Thanks to the vagaries of 18th century health and life expectancy, Charles would eventually swim back upstream and take over as king of Spain.) The family knew that great art attracted attention; Naples was already the zenith of “the grand tour” so beloved by European gentlemen seeking to complete their education. The royals were making a huge deal out of the excavations around Vesuvius, as I wrote about earlier.

The city’s hyperbolic church scene kept an army of talented craftsmen employed creating religious figures. The royal family loved the tradition of the Christmas crèche. Why not expand it, setting the nativity stable in a broader scene of 18th century street life, creating yet another grand artistic statement for the city. This one, however, would have easily portable elements so all those grand tourists could buy copies to take home, fuelling yet another revenue line for the city.

So serious were the Bourbons that they drafted in the best artists in the city for the royal Christmas village. Giuseppe Sanmartino and Francesco Celebrano stepped aside from their work on the Sansevero Chapel (a sightseeing blockbuster I’ve written about here) to fashion figurines out of wire, wood, terracotta and cloth for the royal display. Head to the Museo di Capodimonte to see it and you’ll understand that this isn’t just a bit of holiday decor. This is a masterpiece. This is why it makes perfect sense that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York lays out an enormous Neapolitan presepe each Christmas.

Another magnificent example from this original age of presepe-making is in its own dedicated room off the Cloister of Santa Chiara. (Top photo.)

If you have an enormous amount of money, and significant space for a holiday display, you can still buy a traditional presepe with craftsmanship on par with the 18th century. The centre of this ongoing artistic community is a narrow street in the centre of the historic district called the Via San Gregorio Armeno, but you’ll pass tiny workshops where people are moulding clay body parts and working on other bits in many other streets nearby. The main show, however, is on that short lane running between Spaccanapoli … the main shopping thoroughfare that splits the historic district … and the towering, newly-cleaned bulk of San Paolo Maggiore.

Turn into the small yard just opposite where the tiny lane called the Vico Santa Luciella comes into the Via San Gregorio Armeno and you’ll see what I mean. Capuano is one of many workshops along this street that remain in family ownership, and the current brothers in charge can boast that they’ve supplied the presepe currently on display in the royal palace in Madrid. Here you’ll see city and countryside modelled at multiple scales with cork, wood, and plaster to form multi-level stage sets ready for their exquisite actors.

This is not, however, where the average tourists buy their souvenirs. That happens in the street outside. It’s full of small shops, many of them no more than 20 feet wide, all hawking their individual takes on the Christmas village. Over the past century the Italian tradition has evolved in a curious direction, with people adding modern characters to their home scenes. So the street is swarming with interpretations of Donald Trump, Elton John, Beyoncé, a host of European politicians and enough footballers to assemble your own fantasy team under the tree. Every shop has its own version of Maradona, from figures in straight athletic kit to an angel’s wings to … perplexingly … playing footfall while wearing a bishop’s mitre. That suggests a whole new kind of header.

Perhaps surprisingly, and sadly from the perspective of the shopping list I’d taken on this trip, what you won’t find here are many Catholic saints. I have no interest in updating the ancestral Ferrara nativity set with modern celebrity, but I thought it would be fun to add a group of my favourite saints on either side of the crib, as patrons once did in Medieval nativity scene paintings. My quartet were going to be: St. Anthony, the Ferrara family’s favourite; St. Francis, founder of the crèche tradition and friend to animals; Saint Madeline Sophie, benefactress of my school; and St. Agatha, patron saint of breast cancer. It was not to be. I found Francis. On the religious front, I could have come home with Padre Pio, Papal Saint John Paul II and a generic fat, jolly friar. And that’s about it. Clearly, the workshops are going for quick sales and religion is no longer raking in the cash.

There is a wide range of workmanship here, from exquisite hand-crafting to clumsy and cheap. While everyone insists their production is local, at the low-price end of the market there’s a lot of stuff that looks mass produced and wouldn’t surprise me if it was imported from cheaper manufacturing nations. If you’re going to bother buying in Naples, invest in the craftsmanship rather than the tourist tat. It’s there, in between the junk, you just have to look carefully. A traditional, high-quality figurine will cost you between €40 and €60 for the standard home crèche size of 10cm to 13 cm. The variance in price comes with the details of the clothing and accessories, how much you’re buying, and whether you’re paying cash. It’s standard practice in Italy to have a lower price if digital trails are not involved. While you won’t find a lot of flexibility on price when you’re just buying one thing, if you’re going to take home multiple items there’s often room to negotiate.

Look for three things to ensure that you’re getting hand-crafted, top-quality work.

One: Evidence of production in the shop
The absence of a workbench doesn’t automatically equate to “made in China”. Plenty of these shops are too small to make things on site; glimpses of workshops in surrounding streets attest to the fact that presepe are still locally made, then brought to the Via San Gregorio Armeno to sell. But if there’s a production area in the shop it does tell you they’re eager to show off the process and will often be happy to talk to you about it. If you can find someone working, they’re used to people watching and you’ll find their work fascinating. One obvious difference from my first trip here 20 years ago is the huge surge in the proficiency of English amongst the people who work along this street. The makers are happy when visitors take a real interest; it doesn’t take much to get them opening drawers, showing off collections of arms, legs, heads and fabric, and explaining how they assemble them into the finished figures.

Two: Differences in representation in the same character
That line of wise men who all look exactly the same scream of mass production. Place two Melchiors, or Josephs, or donkeys, side by side and take a look. If they have different facial expressions, clothing or coats, perhaps even slightly different stances, you can be more confident of hand craftsmanship. Also note that even amongst the better makers there’s a variety of quality. I stared hard at Marys from three different shops before I settled on the ones with the most lifelike, delicately-painted faces.

Three: Clothing
The most traditional figures have heads, arms and legs made of clay or wood that are then wired together and covered with real cloth for the clothing that’s then treated to become very stiff. Many other figures on the street are entirely clay: pumped into a mould, popped out, fired, then painted. The latter are still authentic, but they’re cheaper and receive less craftsmanship. If you want to capture the real beauty of presepe, make sure your characters come fully dressed.

These three criteria, and careful shopping over two visits to the street, finally found me getting down to business in Ferrigno. It appears to be a small shop like all the others but is a wonderland just as impressive as Capuano if you head upstairs. (Photo above.)

Here, my new friend Ciro took me through the manufacturing process, helped me find my perfect choices and confirmed the same opinion every other Neopolitan had expressed when shown photos of my family’s existing nativity scene: Jesus was being minded by a wolf, not a dog. I still maintain it’s just an oversized collie, but I added an appropriately scaled hound to my purchases of St. Francis, a new Mary, and a much younger Joseph than my current doddering old man. I will retire the battered originals to handmaiden and shepherd for Christmas ‘24. If I hadn’t been keeping myself under tight budgetary control, I would have dropped another €500 on two of Ferrigno’s exquisite flying angels. They make them here in a variety of colours, shapes and sizes … the bigger they are, the more expensive, obviously. They are exquisite, and it took a real act of willpower to come out of the shop without them.

Ferrara family originals below, my new purchases above

I was still looking for my missing saints. Ciro pointed out that they’d happily make them for me. That was even more tempting than the angelic hosts. But I am heading to Sicily later in the year and if there’s anywhere I’m likely to find a 13 cm figurine of St. Agatha holding her severed breasts on a platter, it will be on her home island. Sicilians love that kind of thing.

I was also amused to see on Ferrigno’s web site that you can commission a custom nativity scene figure of the person of your choice for prices starting from €450. You just have to send photos. Next time you have to find the perfect gift for someone who has everything, there you are. Just like rich Medieval patrons of yore, you can create them to drop in to the nativity scene, immortalised for posterity.

I bet Department 56 doesn’t offer that…