If you’ll recall, a bunch of terrorist jerkfaces did their stupid jerk thing in Barcelona and kind of made me question my desire to stay in Europe.
Well guess what, jerkfaces? I’m still here. And boy am I glad I am, because I’ve been in Naples less than a day and can already tell that the food here is, in the immortal words of Guy Fieri, out of bounds.
I tried a couple of seriously delicious things just by randomly wandering around the Airbnb, which I have to imagine is a good sign.
First up: gelato. Gelato was everywhere in Portugal and Spain, but I purposely avoided it because I knew I’d be in Italy. May as well wait for the real deal.
I went to a place called Fantasia Gelati and tried a small cup of pistachio.
I can’t say conclusively that it’s the best gelato I’ve ever had (there’s a lot of great gelato in Toronto), but it’s certainly right up there. It was super creamy, with a really intense pistachio flavour and a perfect amount of sweetness.
Next up was pizza — I’m in Naples, after all. Pizza needed to happen immediately.
I ordered the margherita pizza at a restaurant called Pizza & Contorni. Margherita pizza is a very strong argument in favour of simpicity in food. It consists only of a very basic tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, a few basil leaves, and a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. That’s it — and yet, when done right (and they certainly did it right here) it has an amazing depth of flavour that belies its simplicity.
A lot of what makes this type of pizza so special is the amazing crust that you can only get from an oven that’s insanely hot (Neopolitan pizza ovens can get as hot as 1000 degrees). The crust winds up lightly crispy on the outside and satisfyingly chewy on the inside, with a slight bitterness thanks to the char from the blazing hot oven.
The version here was maybe a little bit too dense, but was otherwise pretty amazing. And again, I just stumbled across this place randomly.
I think I’m going to like it here.