Naples is renowned for pizza but I found something better

“Tonight, pizza,” decrees my Italian brother-in-law and travelling companion, known henceforth as the TC, and who am I to argue? Pizza was invented in Naples, and if you don’t try a Neapolitan pizza in its birthplace, you haven’t really been.

According to the Neapolitan view of the world, there are just two kinds of pizzas: one is the marinara, topped with tomato, oregano, garlic and olive oil, and a staple since the 16th century, when tomatoes first appeared in Italian kitchens. Nothing to do with the sea, the marinara was a simple dish for hungry fishermen.

The other is the margherita, tomato plus mozzarella and basil, the colours of the Italian flag. Tucked into a laneway just off via Chiaia, Pizzeria Brandi claims to be the originator of the dish, named after Italy’s Queen Margherita in 1889 according to the legend, and where better to try pizza? It’s a homely joint – dark inside, brown toned with a decor reminiscent of the 1950s – and it’s popular with tourists the night we visit.

Pizzas in Naples are cooked quickly, at high temperature in a wood-fired oven, which results in a thick, chewy and lightly charred pizza with a pillowed edge. A Roman pizza is thinner and crisper, so it’s firmer in the hand; the Neapolitan version tends to sag.

Another difference, the Roman pizza is made with olive oil, and it’s topped with exotic ingredients such as prosciutto, mushrooms and artichokes, or even sprinkled with that noxious chemical that hides under the name of truffle oil. A Neapolitan restaurant might serve pizza with buffalo mozzarella but the marinara and margherita are the staples.

Our marinara comes with a thick base of tomatoes, which delights the TC. He grew up south of Naples in Campania, a major tomato-producing area, and the smell of tomatoes conjures memories of his youth.

Our meal is enlivened by an elderly gent playing Neapolitan songs on a guitar. The TC is supremely happy, singing along. He’s not been to Naples for several decades but as soon as we arrived at the station, he was with the taxi drivers, embroiled in an energetic discussion in the mouthy dialect of the south.

Neapolitan conversations have an operatic quality and this is a city that bares its soul in public. Apartments are small, families are large and not much is private. Since mobile phone signals do not penetrate the vertiginous cityscape of old Naples, its citizens often lean out from their balconies and windows to make a call, and their conversations are never quiet. Gianluca might be making an appointment with his dentist, commiserating with his mother on the price of tomatoes or giving an errant son a piece of his mind – who knows? The tenor of the conversation is the same, underpinned by a rich lexicon of facial contortions and hand gestures.

The next evening, after a day spent on Capri, we wander towards our hotel along Vico Lungo Gelso and the place is alight. For hundreds of metres, the narrow passageway is lined with restaurants, and they’re packed.

As we pass A Taverna d’e Zoccole, a couple leave and we’re in. It’s a seafood restaurant (its name means the tavern of the prostitutes, the TC tells me) but the aroma coming from the kitchen does not suggest a house of ill repute.

For his first course, the TC chooses mussels steamed with black pepper, garlic, olive oil and parsley, finished with lemon. The mussels are smaller than the ones at home; they’re velvety with a hint of salty sea. I go for the fresh anchovies marinated in lemon juice, olive oil and garlic, and it’s a taste sensation; the tartness of the lemons hits a high note against the rich, oily anchovies.

We are mopping up mussel juice with bread when our main course of seafood linguine al cartoccio arrives. It’s pasta with clams, mussels, prawns and calamari in a foil packet. The chefs make a tomato-based sauce while the pasta cooks and then the pasta is mixed with the sauce and seafood, wrapped in a foil packet and baked in a hot oven for 15 minutes.

Open the foil, and a soul-stealing fusion of garlic, wine, tomatoes and seafood bursts forth. All the flavours transfer to the pasta, yet it’s still firm and silky. The TC is impressed. It reminds him of his mother’s cooking.

“I don’t really like pizza,” he tells me, sotto voce, “but seafood linguine al cartoccio is what the angels eat.”

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