Greg and I are real foodies. We love to find the small out of the way local restaurants that are so very special, all over Europe. We also like to drink local and often travel to a location simply to learn more about wine from the people who actually make it. I want to offer the next several posts on some of my favorite meals in specific countries. Today, I’ll start by talking about Italy and one of my favorite meals while traveling there. In following posts, I’ll talk about other favorite meals – in Italy and then in France and in Ireland. This could take a while!! There have been SO many fabulous meals over the years!!!
Ok, I know I just said that we love out of the way restaurants and that is totally true – but it’s not absolute! As much as we love restaurants most people have never heard of, sometimes we do go to places that are fairly well known, and it can be totally worth it! I loved reading Eat, Pray, Love so much. When it came out, the author’s description of eating pizza in Naples made me want to fly to Italy that very day and eat nothing but pizza for weeks. We didn’t get there right away, but when we did go to this part of Italy (you can see some info on Naples here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naples) we made a point of going to L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele (http://www.damichele.net). It’s only a 15 minute walk from the Napoli Centrale train station. We had to wait in line to get in but that was part of the fun!! Waiting with all the other locals and tourists was fascinating; they were so helpful! We got a number and waited for our number to be called, but then jumped the gun…we thought they were calling us but we had misunderstood when another number was called, in Italian (of course!). We had a good laugh -- along with everyone else in line....and then when our number finally was called, everyone pointed us in the right direction and cheered!! It was so funny. We were seated at a communal table with an Italian couple. I love this idea of eating with strangers and making new friends in the process. They didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak much Italian, but I do speak French and so did she, so we had a really fun conversation, in French! They really only have 2 kinds of pizza at da Michele – Margherita and Marinara. They are baked in a super hot oven and the crust is delightfully thin so the pizzas are ready in a heartbeat. They arrived, steamy hot and melt in your mouth delicious. The setting was great, the experience an adventure and the pizza was wonderful! Our afternoon at Da Michele was memorable and fun! We loved it – it was a favorite meal! It was one of many. Now that I’m thinking about this, it’s going to be hard to limit this to just a few favorites, but I’ll do my best!
Naples, Italy