An Idiot's Guide to Eating Pizza in Italy
It's me. I'm the idiot.
Please enjoy this free post all about my time spent eating pizza in Italy. The next few posts will continue to be free (including a big crosspost I have coming up that intersects with my other gig, which is writing about the Chicago Blackhawks here) then after that posts like this one will be for paid subscribers only.
While every American commercial for an Italian-themed restaurant or food product would have you believe that Italy is overflowing with restaurants with long, rustic tables where everyone is ecstatic to be there and a kindly, old Nonna is passing you bowl after bowl that’s filled to the brim with the most delicious pasta you’ve ever seen in your life, the reality is a lot of the principles that govern the way you should eat in America still apply. Italian food, even in Italy, is not bulletproof - which I unfortunately had to learn the hard way. So now it’s my job - nay, my duty - to share all those very important lessons with you.
First pizza!
My wife and I ordered a classic Margherita pizza, but upgraded to Buffalo mozzarella (as in made from the milk of a buffalo) at a restaurant called Chez Black.
It was a loooooong travel day - Chicago to Rome by plane, Rome to Naples by train, Naples to Positano by way of a truly insane private driver - so by the time we settled into our accommodations we were pretty cooked. Positano is the busiest tourist destination along the Amalfi Coast, and we ended up walking down to its busiest area, the walkway that runs along the water in front of its main beach, Spiaggia Grande.
I usually do extensive, exhaustive research about places to eat before I travel anywhere new (especially when it comes to pizza) but Positano’s Google reviews were really tricky to decipher. A majority of the restaurants, especially along the Spiaggia Grande, have reviews that are somewhere in the low threes - and a lot of that seems to have nothing to do with the actual food itself and is more about influencer nonsense and tourists being unhappy with wait times.
I remembered seeing Chez Black mentioned on some of the travel sites I visited, and they looked busy, so we snagged a table inside.
THE FIRST PIZZA I EVER ATE IN ITALY was…fine? My biggest complaint is/was my biggest complaint with Neapolitan style pizza in general, which is that oftentimes it can be too soft in the center, essentially to the point of turning soggy. An extra 30 seconds of bake time would have improved this pizza dramatically. The Buffalo mozzarella was incredible though, even undercooked, and the fact it stood out so much against the backdrop of a pretty average pizza was a whole ‘nother level of a bummer. We had high hopes for our first real Italian meal, but non si può avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca (I looked up some old Italian sayings, that one is incredible).
So lesson learned, when you’re traveling to a tourism heavy city maybe don’t eat in the area that’s overflowing with tourists if your goal is to experience something more than a basic interpretation of the local cuisine. It’s the same reason why I don’t typically eat along Michigan Avenue (except for Labriola and the occasional Shake Shack), and why I won’t eat anywhere near Times Square either.
Second pizza!
So what did we do the next day? Leaned even further into the tourist zone and ordered a pizza at the bar after we spent the day at L’Incanto Beach Club.
In defense of our logic we hadn’t really planned to order pizza, but we were hungry after swimming all day and the only options on the bar menu were pizzas, french fries and chips.
The pizza at L’Incanto - which you can also order at their restaurant - was fantastic. As you can see from the pictures the mozzarella released a ton of moisture during the bake, but somehow the pizza didn’t taste the least bit soggy.
It was light, delicious and the crust puffed up so big that it felt like tearing into the fluffiest, airiest, giant fresh soft pretzel of your dreams.
I also ate this pizza immediately after taking a nap. And eating anything within plus/minus one hour of taking a nap elevates that eating experience to an almost unfair level. So there’s lesson number two: Nap. Eat. Repeat. And you can trust the pizza at Italian beach clubs.
Third pizza!
For dinner on our second night we decided to forego the Googling and listen to a local instead.
The host at our villa (quite possibly the most pretentious thing I’ve ever typed) recommended we take a walk up the hill from where we were staying to the Eden Roc Hotel to try their specialty pizza and steak restaurant - Roc Pizza & Steak.
When I say specialty in this instance, I absolutely mean it. The restaurant imports their steaks from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Spain, Scotland, and America. And their menu has five pages of pizzas, with ten pizzas on each page.
My wife and I debated trying a pistachio pizza (one of her all-time favorite pizzas has pistachio, sausage and lemon curd on it - which admittedly feels a little too busy for my plain cheese sensibilities sometimes) but she decided to go with a diavola with spicy salami, whereas I saw potato and fennel sausage and had to give it a shot. As a child of Chicago, the siren song of fennel sausage calls to me at all times.
The pizza was incredible. The crust was light, airy, and expertly baked - but even more than that every ingredient on both pizzas was cooked perfectly and put together in a way that all of the flavors not only balanced each other out, but you could also taste each component individually as well. I hate food critic speak as much as the next person, but that’s the only way to properly describe it.
FWIW the steak was exceptional as well. We ended up sitting outside at this tiny, six seat ledge that looked out over the Positano bay and a couple from Mississippi sat next to us, got chummy with my wife (God bless her and her superhuman ability to connect with strangers, a skill which I absolutely do not possess), and decided to share some of their dinner with us.
So there’s lesson three; listen to the locals. And super duper fast Mario song bonus points when they tell you to check out a restaurant that specializes in steak and pizza.
Fourth pizza : (
There is no Instagram post for this pizza…only regret. They can’t all be winners, but I absolutely should have known better.
After bidding arrivederci to Positano, we hopped a ferry over to the island of Capri. When we got off the ferry at the port we were immediately overwhelmed (and hungry), so we ducked into the first quiet place we could find.
Everything I said about eating in tourist areas, multiply that times ten when you’re talking about a port. And I know that! I’ve lived in multiple port cities! Anything you eat there will be twice as expensive and half as good, and the same goes for any and all souvenirs. A marina port is just like an airport, but somehow even further devoid of humanity.
The pizza wasn’t just bad for Italy, it was disappointing for anywhere. You can see how dry the dough is. How old (and dark) the sauce is. The lack of cheese. And the coup de grace; sad, wilted basil straight from a bag.
Fifth pizza!
Much like a professional athlete who biffs it in a big game, the impetus was to get right back out there and atone (and eating two pizzas in a day is absolutely my form of professional athleticism).
Thankfully we were staying in Anacapri (which is at the very top of Capri), where it’s far less crowded than Positano and the Google reviews are much easier to decipher.
We found a neighborhood pizzeria and pasta shop, with a garden terrace where you can sit under their lemon trees, and headed that way for dinner.
Aumm Aumm was the mystery restaurant I’d been picturing in my mind every time I would daydream about all the wonderful things we were going to eat in the weeks leading up to our trip. And, AND!!!, they had a long, rustic table where a gigantic Italian family was passing around pizzas and bowls of pasta while having a celebratory dinner for someone’s birthday!
Their pizza was fantastic. You can see the olive oil on the surface in the picture, and it was the first pizza I’d eaten in Italy that I felt like was properly oiled (uhhhhh).
You can elevate pizza to all kinds of insane levels these days, but there’s also something to be said for delivering a classic interpretation that’s exactly what someone is hoping for. I’ve traveled for and wide looking for pizzas like that, and Aumm Aumm absolutely came through in that regard.
Last pizza!
I said it on the Instagram, but I’ll say it again now: the pizza I ate at Ce Stamo A Pensa is the exact reason I wanted to start doing this in the first place.
Not only was it the best pizza I had in Italy, it’s also the best pizza I’ve had this year, and maybe even the best singular food item I’ve eaten all year as well. It really is that good. I wish I could take every single person I know who loves pizza there so we could it eat together (and they could pay).
Ce Stamo serves their version of deep fried pizza (called ‘Montanare’ because it originated in the mountains of Naples) - which is also known as Pizza Fritta. The dough is rounded then lightly fried, and the finished product is somehow puffy, soft, airy and crispy all at the same time (which is exactly the type of crust I hope for every time I go out for new pizza).
Ce Stamo was the one restaurant I had heard so much about that I made absolutely sure we would have plenty of time to get there on our last day of the trip in Rome - but I also made sure I knew as little about the pizza as possible going in, which is exactly the way I like it. Let me find out for myself.
The taste of the dough reminded me of the first panzerotti I ever had (which to this day is still one of my all-time favorite pizzas) - sky point to Buck’s Pizza in Forest Park, IL - but the consistency was lighter, more like a Sopaipilla or a fry bread.
The sauce they use is thicker and rich - which is a contrast to the brighter/fresh tomato sauce I had on most of the other pizzas during our trip - and they place your toppings on top of the sauce.
We ordered a meatball and a Buffalo mozzarella and while they were both fantastic in entirely different ways, I think I ultimately preferred the meatball (which is really saying something that I picked the pizza with absolutely zero cheese on it).
Initially I thought I would drive myself insane trying to replicate the potatoes on the pizza from Roc but now I know I’m absolutely going to have to try and figure out a way to Frankenstein a version of Montanare at home because I’m going to want to eat it all the time (although without looking it up I’m guessing there’s a few places in New York who do their own version).
While I may have spent a significant amount of time in this post posturing as if there’s rules to abide by when eating pizza, I’ll state pretty emphatically now that there are none. And there shouldn’t ever be! There’s so many different and wonderful kinds of pizza out there and half the fun of eating it is finding it in the first place.
I feel incredibly fortunate that I was able to go halfway around the world to eat some wonderful pizzas in the country in which pizza was born, and I appreciate anyone that’s interested enough to read about the experience. So thank you.
In perusing the internet in hopes of finding a supercut of bad commercials for American-based Italian restaurants to link to in my initial paragraph I stumbled upon something truly amazing; a study published by an organization called The Order Sons of Italy in America entitled Italian American Stereotypes In U.S. Advertising.
The study was commissioned in 2003, which is absolutely in the peak of Sopranos-mania, and it seems the organization is most concerned with stereotypical depictions of Italians in organized crime.
I also found this article about an older Twitter account I never knew existed that’s called “Italians Mad at Food”, which seems not only hilarious but also maybe part of the impetus for the wave of culturally based cooking reaction videos that seemed to have popped up in the last few years, like my man Uncle Roger.
And finally, the synapses in my brain are officially broken. Every single time I typed “my wife” in this post I immediately thought of this:
My Grandma and Great-Aunts (save that "Nonna" shit for the Olive Garden) usually only do the round pizze fritte in the first week of August for the San Lorenzo festival in the Heights, and we usually eat them with cinnamon and sugar, but they're also ideal as the bread in a sausage and pepper sandwich.