Anthony Capella in Naples

This is the text of an article by Anthony which appeared in The Sunday Times, April 2006.

The lump of dough is the size of a bowling ball and almost as heavy: working it requires real physical effort. Over and over again the pizzaiuolo heaves it onto the marble counter, forcing air into the mixture. Then he takes a chunk the size of an orange, flattens it with a push of his fist, and twirls it on his fingers until, magically, it seems to open up like a cowboy's lassoo into a shimmering, spinning saucer a few millimetres thick, hovering over his hand. This is la gestualità, 'the movement': as important a part of making a genuine pizza as choosing the right ingredients - which only ever consist of San Marzano tomatoes, oil and oregano, or, if you are making a Margherita instead of the more traditional Marinara, some mozzarella and a few torn basil leaves.

    Once the toppings are in place, the pizzaiuolo takes a long paddle not unlike a lollipop lady's sign and slides the pizza into the glowing mouth of a wood-burning oven. Three minutes later it's done; the toppings still liquid, the crust light and airy, the base mottled with ash from the burning logs.

    ''I will admit,'' my 16-year-old son says a little later, as he pauses for breath, ''this is better than Domino's.''

    I have come to Naples for two reasons. The first is easily accomplished: I want to show Tom what a real pizza tastes like. Naples, I have told him, is where fast food was invented: as well as pizza, we will eat taralli, fried doughnuts studded with nuts, and sfogliatelle, pastries filled with cream which, improbably, the Neapolitans devour for breakfast. In a city that lives on the streets - noisy, frenetic, flamboyant - they have elevated street food to the level of high cuisine. Yet every business, I promise him, is unique, a family establishment where quality is all and the whole concept of food-as-corporate-product anathema.

    Tom can't quite get his head round the idea of a successful food business that doesn't want to take over the world. As we drive out of the airport, he points triumphantly to a MacDonald's.

    ''But there's no one in it,'' I say, even more triumphantly. At that moment, a moped passes us. On the pillion, a young woman sits facing backwards. She has removed her helmet, if indeed she ever had one, the better to attend to the mobile telephone in her right hand and the pizza folded a fazzoletto - like a handkerchief - in her left. The young man driving her swerves round our taxi, prompting an operatic exchange of insults, during which our driver takes both hands off the wheel and steers with his knees in order to make his point more forcefully. The young woman, of course, takes no notice whatsoever.

Later, the same taxi driver will cheerfully try to charge us double what's on the meter - ''It's not working properly, and anyway there's a supplement when the traffic is heavy'' - and, by way of compensation, write us a list of what he considers to be the best pizza establishments in town. (For the record, he favours Cafasso, in Via Giulio Cesare, thus marking himself out as something of a purist. Tom and I preferred Marino, in Via Santa Lucia, and Matozzi, in Piazza Carita. Both the latter are members of Vera Pizza Napoletana, the organisation set up to protect the provenance of the pizza, but they are not so dogmatic about it that they don't sell other dishes too.)  

My second reason for coming to Naples is more complicated. I was last here two years ago, with Niall Downing, the director of The Naked Chef, and Jamie Oliver. I had just published a novel set amongst the backstreet restaurants of Rome, and I was keen to find another subject that also dealt with the relationship between food and love. During my visit I happened to read Naples '44, Norman Lewis's memoir of the Allied Occupation, and an idea was born.

The Naples Norman Lewis describes centres around Zi' Teresa's, a black market dive near the bombed-out harbour where dapper mafiosi entertained American staff officers and soldiers on leave danced with their girls. All restaurants were meant to be closed and food rationed, but Zi' Teresa's somehow got round the restrictions, even if you had to be careful what you were eating - there were, as Lewis tartly observed, not many cats left on the streets of Naples at the time. As an NCO in the Field Security Service, he was nominally responsible for preventing this sort of thing, but in fact he was kept busy trying to prevent British soldiers from marrying their beautiful Italian girlfriends, something the high command had decided was happening much too frequently.

I had wondered what might happen if these two worlds collided - if, say, a young British officer doing Lewis's job had himself fallen in love with a young Italian cook - and the wondering gradually took on the shape of a novel. For two years, in fact, this project occupied my entire waking mind. In the depths of a British winter, I imagined myself back in Zi' Teresa's, wolfing down baby octopus simmered in tomatoes: sitting in traffic on the M40, I was mentally strolling through Spaccanapoli, Naples' medieval quarter, a refreshing cup of spremuta di limone in my hand. Now, finally, I have returned, partly to check that my imagination and reality have not diverged too much, and partly out of a sense of pilgrimage to mark the book's publication.

First stop, therefore, is Zi' Teresa's itself. To a British way of thinking, it may seem remarkable that a restaurant famous during the war should still be going strong  - almost as if Lyon's Corner Houses had evolved into gastropubs - but that's to misunderstand the Neapolitans' deep sense of tradition and continuity when it comes to culinary matters. Zi' Teresa's is a big, brightly lit room, with tables seating up to thirty people, which in Naples constitutes a relatively small family outing. The waiters - some of whom Lewis would probably have recognised - serve classics that Lewis would certainly have been familiar with: spaghetti al vongole, seafood pasta slippery with fishy juices; pesce spada, swordfish; tonno. pan-fried tuna. It's typical of half-a-dozen big places clustered round the Borgo Marino, although the bombed-out warships Lewis describes have now been replaced by yachts.

The next day we head out to Vesuvius. This was also an important part of Lewis's story - the last time it erupted was in 1944, when Allied soldiers gave up their leave to help evacuate the locals - but it's long been central to Neapolitan gastronomy too: it's the volcanic potash in the soil that makes simple ingredients grown here so special. Some of the best Vesuvian restaurants are in the modern part of Pompeii. In fact, you can easily slip out of the excavations by the back entrance and enjoy a leisurely lunch before resuming your sightseeing. Il Principe and Il Presidente are two of the more famous establishments, the former previously the holder of a Michelin star, but we opted for the more homely Zi' Caterina. From the outside, to my son's amazement, it might have been a fast food joint, complete with a counter for takeaways. Only when you step inside do you discover the chiller cabinet of fresh fish, the wood-burning pizza oven and, once again, the huge tables seating contented Italian families.

This happy juxtaposition of excellence and informality, of a long tradition lightly worn, was something we encountered again and again. Take our stroll down the Via Pignaseca. This street, one of the most vibrant food markets in Italy, is also a hotbed of wheeler-dealing. Would-be Pavarottis sing out the qualities of their wares; prices plummet the further away you walk, and any refusal to taste the goods on offer will, you are told, provoke the vendors into an early grave. Halfway down the street, at Tripperia X, there is a tiny shop selling nothing but tripe, the display of cow's innards watered by a sprinkler system to keep it fresh. There are even a few tables in the back where you can sample the goods, cooked by the owner with a little calf's head broth for flavour.

If you don't feel like making tripe your whole meal, continue down the hill to the Piazza Carit‡ and Matozzi's. The first thing you notice on entering is the vast beehive-shaped wood oven, a miniature Vesuvius before which the pizzaiuolo stands on a raised plinth, the better to demonstrate his skills. In another corner, a television is tuned to a game show. Here you can eat a wonderful, dripping mozzarella di bufala or an equally fresh fish from the bay, expertly roasted. Then you decamp to the Gelateria Schimmia next door, thought by many to make the city's best ice cream, where the seasonal flavours include blood orange sorbet, and the specialities include a banana dipped in molten chocolate.

I wondered, idly, if there was such a thing as a modern, foodie restaurant in Naples. We did find a couple, such as the tiny, candlelit Coco Loco, but what was surprising was that the gulf between it and Matozzi was not so very large - more to do with the prettiness of the surroundings than any great leap in quality.

And it is this, perhaps, which is the most defining characteristic of Neapolitan food: its consistency. The guide books might steer you towards one pizzeria rather than another, or one big brasserie rather than its rival, but the truth is that wherever you go here you will eat pretty much the same dishes, prepared with the same love and passion. They simply care too much to let the quality slip, and with a past like theirs, who needs innovation? It's as if every single restaurant, gelateria or street stall is part of the same all-pervading culture. Strangely enough, it's the same philosophy that MacDonalds and Dominos aspire to: the difference is that here, it works.

Zi' Teresa
Borgo Marinari 1
081 764 0195
A meal for two about E70 without wine

Zi' Caterina
Via Vitt. Emanuele, 8, Pompei
081 850 7447
www.zicaterinapompei.com
A meal for two about E40 without wine

Tripperia Fiorenzano
Via Pignaseca, 14, Naples
A dish of tripe E4

Gelateria La Scimmia
Piazza Carit‡, 4

Ristorante Matozzi
Piazza Carit‡, 2
0815524322
A meal for two about E40 without wine

Coco Loco
Piazza Giulio Rodino 31
081 415482
A meal for two about E90 without wine

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