Neapolitan Phase of the Day
A’ Fanabola’ slang for “Go to Napoli” (aka Go to Hell). At the time of the great emigration (1880s – 1920s), Napoli was considered to be hell.
And depending on the intensity of one’s inflection and conviction , it means, “Go f¥€k yourself (or in the Justin Bieber’s immortal words “you can go and love yourself.”)
When I hear ”A’ Fanabola’”, I think the opposite and reply “andaimo (let’s go)!
Now, after having spent multiple days in Napoli, I had ample chance to enjoy several other pizza gems (and the fanicular! Here they are:
Lunch in Pignasecca Market – Fiorenzano
Pignasecca Market is a quintessential street market of Napoli. There are many like it in other parts of Italy, but Pignasecca seems to be a little more…well, Neapolitan; meaning chaotic, frenetic. Being at the base of the Spanish Quarter (the supposed “bad” part of Napoli…even though we’ve walked at night there multiple times) adds to Pignasecca’s mystique.
My travel companions were looking for street food, and specifically cupo which is various fried small fish served in a paper cone (cupo). Since I don’t like the “pesce, buccola”, I settled for, what else, pizza. In this case, stuffed melanzane (egg plant) pizza from Fiorenzano. (FB link).
The stuffed pizza was “meh” (which is just OK, remember, there’s no bad pizza). The best part about the pizza was that it was served between two sheets of paper in true street food fashion. Unfortunately, the paper immediately turned spotted with oil; the crust was soft from the oil and had little flavor.
Flavor was also lacking in the sparse amount of sauce and cheese.
One might not be able to get bad pizza, especially in Napoli, but Fiorenzano comes close!
May 3 – Lunch in Capri – Pasticceria Da Alberto
Though Capri is my least favorite of the Napoli Bay islands (behind Procida and Ischia), it’s typically a must see for new tourists to Napoli.
After a fast ferry ride where I get seasick…as usual…we arrived at Capri’s ferry marina.
QUICK ASIDE – even though I don’t like to eat fish, fish really like me. You should see the school of fish that line up along the port and starboards sides of a boat when I embark. They are anticipating getting fed by the food that I ate that morning….BTW, I’m typing this on another rocky ferry ride…the fish are swarming!!!!
We decided that we walk up to the village of Capri from the port. The walk is up and up and up. If you’ve not been to any of the islands of the Bay of Naples Archipelago (see Wikipedia), you know that the mountain grows immediately from the shore. So, to get the Capri town, it was a vertical hike.
Once up in town, we walked around the various trattorie and pizzerie (plural for pizzeria), we found Da Alberto for no special reason other than it was there!
I ordered a pizza! Upon the pizza’s arrival, you could tell it was a “regular” oven versus wood fired oven baked which should be expected since it was a pasticceria (versus pizzeria). Despite this, it was still good (not great).
The crust had a good yeasty taste but no char due to it’s oven. The sauce was tangy and the cheese was plentiful. It was slightly too salty possibly due to the large amount of cheese (versus what I normally find in Naples). I probably would not go back due to its high cost (E10) compared to the rest of Naples (usually E6).
This was not my last pizza for the day! More in Part 3!
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