My first restaurant report from this ongoing Italy trip was of excellent pizza eaten in Naples (at Attilio). I posted that as we were leaving Rome more than a week ago. My second restaurant report from this ongoing Italy trip is also of excellent pizza eaten in Naples—indeed on the very same day as that first round of excellent pizza. But now I am more than one city behind. From Rome we went to Florence and from Florence to the Tuscan countryside. (We ate pizza in Rome and Florence as well, by the way, though not in the Tuscan countryside.) We are leaving the Tuscan countryside tomorrow for Padua and the wifi has finally perked up enough for me to be able to upload a lot of pictures. And so here you are. What a lovely birthday present for America. You’re welcome.

Starita, like Attilio, is a Naples institution—and an even older one. Attilio has been around since the late 1930s, Starita since the early years of the century. It has in all that time been owned and operated by the same family. It’s located in the Materdei neighbourhood and has been since the beginning. Now if you google you might come across references to Materdei being a dangerous neighbourhood, particularly after dark. We did not find it to be so. When we asked at departure where we might easily get a cab, the manager directed us to walk towards the archaeological museum where there is a cab stand. It was past 9.30 pm and dark and it was a completely innocuous walk—and nor were we the only tourists doing it. On the whole, we found Naples’ reputation as an unsafe city to be quite overblown. But let’s get to the pizza.

As I said, we ate at Attilio and Starita on the same day. Attilio for lunch, Starita for dinner. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We were staying in a flat on via Duomo, a hop, skip and a jump in one direction from L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele and in the other from Gino e Toto Sorbillo, which are the two places that get the most press and tourist attention. Having eaten at the smaller Attilio for lunch we’d thought we might try one of the larger crowd-pleasers for dinner and see if we could tell any significant difference between then. Accordingly, we headed off to Gino e Toto Sorbillo. On arriving we found roughly 15 million people milling around outside, about half of them seemingly inebriated. I deposited the family in a relatively tranquil corner of the street and waded in to find out how long the wait would be. The woman taking down names only raised her eyebrows when I asked, as if to say, don’t you have eyes you fool?! After a brief familial discussion we decided to pass on a likely 90-120 minute wait. And so it was off to Starita.

We walked part of the way and then tired (we’d already walked about seven miles that day) we took a cab the rest of the way. We arrived to find a wait outside Starita as well, albeit a much shorter one. But then a very nice surprise: the woman taking down names said parties with children didn’t have to wait; and so we were ushered in right away and directed to a table somewhere deep inside the restaurant. And it is a deep restaurant. You enter in front of the kitchen and then walk through a couple of hallways lined with tables. Further in the hallways open up to a number of small dining rooms. We had a table at one of these. We sat down and got down to bidness.

One of the things that becomes clear quickly is that even if Starita may not attract any more of a tourist crowd than Attilio does, they are more geared towards serving them. If you are an English speaker you will likely find your table assigned a fairly English-fluent server; and you will certainly be given an English menu. Both happened to us. (Please don’t make this the basis for choosing one over the other: a) Attilio is easy to navigate; b) being more English-friendly doesn’t make Starita’s pizza less good.) Having walked about seven miles that day, the morning’s pizza had long been absorbed and we were ready to reload. So we once again got a couple of fried things and three pizzas to share among us. (It’s the norm in Italy, seemingly, by the way, for one adult to eat one pizza by themselves.)

The fried things included another potato crocche and stuffed and fried zucchini flowers. The crocche was the least of the three we had in the city—it was a bit too stodgy; the stuffed zucchini flowers were very good. The pizzas were all excellent, though we didn’t all agree on which we thought was the best. We once again got a Margherita; plus a Vesuvio Special (with red and yellow Piennolo del Vesuvio tomatoes, bacon, buffalo mozzarella and basil; and a Siciliana (fried eggplant, cherry tomatoes, fiordilatte mozzarella from Campania, and basil). One boy gave his vote to the Margherita; the other two to the Vesuvio Special; the missus and I both had the Siciliana at the top.

For a look at the restaurant and what we ate, click on an image below to launch a larger slideshow. Scroll down to see how much it cost and how we thought it compared to Attilio.

With a couple of glasses of wine and a couple of soft drinks, the total came to 51 Euros—or pretty much on par with Attilio.

How did we think the pizza compared to Attilio? Well, the family was split. We all agreed that the crust at Attilio had been superior that day—though we disagreed on by how much. The missus and the older boy thought that this difference was made up by superior flavour on the toppings at Starita. The younger boy and I demurred. In other words, as close as they were, I had Attilio clearly ahead. That said, I thought the single best pizza I had that day was Starita’s Siciliana. And I should say we all thought the fritti at Attilio were much better.

But please keep in mind that we ate one meal at Attilio and one meal at Starita. And we were only in Naples for a couple of days and ate pizza nowhere else. The pizza at both places was head and shoulders above the best we’ve had anywhere else but our experience was too limited for us to be able to pronounce authoritatively between them or produce opinions on where the best pizza in Naples is to be found. That’s a conversation for people who live in Naples or visit very often. For the rest of us, we can take solace in knowing that if we visit any of Naples’ better regarded pizzerias—and there are many of them—we are likely to eat excellent pizza.

Well, we ate pretty good pizza in Rome and Florence as well. But I’ll try to make my next Italy report non-pizza-focused. That’ll be on our dinner a little after arrival the previous night. Maybe later this week or maybe next Tuesday. Let’s see.