Welcome to Naples!
"Here is your pizza!"
I started the (bright sunlit) day (midday sunshine even at 4 am aka the middle of the night) sitting outside my Hotel Bjorken waiting for my taxi to the airport. I was headed to Naples from the little town of Umea, in Sweden’s Arctic Circle where I had been attending The Umea Food Symposium, giving a presentation asking: “Is Delicious Important?” (Conclusion: YES YES emphatically YES). It might seem like a simple question, or topic, but it is surprisingly deeply rooted how exactly YES the answer is.
Once upon a time airlines, even short haul around Europe, fed you. Now if they do, its for a price. A glossy four-colour printed card in the seatback pocket in front of you shows all of the wonderful (overpriced) (under-delicious) things you can have for just the swipe of a plastic card. Like a not-too-interesting sandwich. Or a chocolate bar. Or alcohol, there is always alcohol.
I don’t drink on flights since the day several years ago when I landed at Heathrow, Terminal 2, so full of grappa I was barely compos mentis. Happy, yes, but not really the state you want to be to enter London Underground’s Central Line. Lesson learned (probably forever) so this time, as usual, I kept chugging water with the occasional bottled juice.
With 3 layovers for connections, I thought that there would be ample opportunity for a few noshes along the way— a slice of Princess cake in Stockholm? A big fat mustard smeared wurst and slab of sour rye in Munich?. As it happened there was no time; I had enough to cope with simply running from arrival gate to departure gate, endlessly rehydrating.
But it was okay. It was more than okay. Headed to Naples: I had to save my appetite.
Walking through Arrivals I sniffed the air: did I smell pizza? (or was this a wonderful, wonderful hallucination?).
Immediately I was embraced by Donatella Barzan who was meeting us at the airport, to keep us going (and going to the right places) in other words, the mother hen to our wild and crazy let-loose-in-Naples-selves; Gaetano, faithful driver, was at her side.
Donatella’s eyes were flashing, red hair curls bouncing away, red painted fingernails, all in motion. “Maybe you are hungry?” she asked. “We are expected for dinner, but we need to wait here for the others, and I think [it would only be sensible] to have a snack”.
That was how I found myself a mere handful of steps fresh off the plane, sitting at a table in I Fratelli la Bufale—”Buffalo Brothers”—a plate of fresh mozzarella in front of me, awaiting pizza. Magically a knife and fork had appeared in my hands.
Crucial in judging/choosing a restaurant in Naples is: the quality of its mozzarella? Not only the quality, but the character. Not all mozzarellas are made equal: in fact, I would say that no two are alike. A mozzarella is unlike any other cheese: springy, chewy, flowing with milk when you cut into it. Outside of Napoli and its environs, you just don’t get mozzarella like that. Like this.
Here I wax lyrical, mouth full, olive oil moistening the corners of my mouth.
Donatella tastes the mozzarella.
And Gaetano…
Next came pizza.
In addition to the Napoletana, we had a Montanara: a disc of dough, crisply fried until puffy as a cloud, then topped with tomatoes and baked, a chunk of lovely mozzarella plopped onto it before being devoured. Both fresh basil and lots of crumbled dried oregano.
Not pictured: the tiramisu which was unspeakably gorgeous, so light, so delicate, so—yes, gorgeous—that we ordered a second after we finished the first. And still, still, I didn’t get a chance to snap it before whoosh, the second plate too was gone.
By then, our “sensible snack” had been several hours, and the plane carrying Luca Marchiori (Luca’s Italy) and Soha Darwish (Creative Culinary) was almost there. “They’ll be hungry!” cried Donatella. “They’ll need a snack”.
And so, thats how Luca and Soha found us: standing in the Arrivals, holding a pizza box, crying out: “Welcome to Naples! Here is your pizza!”.
And here is a little video of them eating it in the car, on our hour or so drive to Paestum where a “proper dinner” was waiting. Pizza was the perfect appetizer: a “small snack” of the UNESCO recognized edible icon of Naples’ culinary culture, eaten in the backseat of a speeding car headed towards some of the most lush fruit and vegetable growing countryside in the world.
Recommended pizzeria, for your first bite of Naples: I Fratelli a Bufale. Turn right when you exit the arrivals gate.
Follow Soha Darwish on instagram: @sohadarwish_food
Check out Luca: lucasitaly.com
Lovely!
The mozzarella looks juicy as buratta!