8862 neapolitan food

I tend to agree with your wife regarding how good pizza is in Naples. Difficult to find something in the same category elsewhere.
I read that the name pizza originates from a Roman dish called [B][I]picea[/I][/B] about two thousand years ago. It was apparently a kind of focaccia.
In Naples, it became extremely popular when King Ferdinand I (Bourbon) visited a pizza oven owned by Antonio Testa and loved the product he tasted. The king even asked another well known [B][I]pizzaiolo[/I][/B], Domenico Testa, to come and cook some pizzas for the Court. The king had pizza ovens built in his palaces as he was very fond of this dish.
Another country where you can eat fabulous pizza outside Italy and Naples is in Argentina. Really some excellent pizza restaurants in that country.

Adriatica
I was at that pizzeria a couple of weeks ago and although we arrived a bit late for lunch, we decided to have the takeaway calzone which was also very good.
The variations of pizzas around italy is interesting. Personally, I'm not a fan of very thin pizzas that you tend to get in Abruzzo and the regions northwards. Sometimes they're so thin that they are almost a poppadum. Everyone has their own tastes of course, but I prefer the Neapolitan pizzas cooked in a wood burning oven, even the burnt edges taste good. I also love the deep fried mini calzone stuffed with ricotta or ricotta and mozzarella. Equally, I like the very thick pizzas in Puglia where my family come from with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and basil that make all the difference. With any pizzas, if you have excellent ingredients, you only need one or two toppings in addition to your tomatoe base. Locally, where we come from, the specialities are Pizza con cipolla which is a thick pizza with a layer of onions in the middle (sometimes with anchovies as well) and Pizza con patate which is a thick pizza with a layer of thinly sliced potatoes either in the middle or on top. Our village baker makes them early in the morning and we have them for breakfast.

[quote=adriatica;83317]... despite this place being a sort of chain of restaurants i can recommend... rossopomodoro in the new shopping centre outside teramo.[/quote]
We've eaten at Rossopomodoro in Teramo's glitzy new Gran Sasso shopping a couple of times now and found it very nice. As you say, John, the prices do seem a bit higher than what can be found elsewhere, but the food is good and the staff friendly. For those whose Italian isn't great, there are English menus available and some of the staff are fluent. Just be a bit wary of having a sales job done on you - the last time we ate there, we ended up being persuaded to order far more than we could comfortably eat!

In a similar vein, it might be of interest to some to know that Burger King in the same shopping centre has now finally opened. :yes:

I refuse to feel [I]too[/I] guilty about getting a quick meal there, since the number of local folk chosing to have a Whopper means the place is close to chaotic at lunch time and in the evening.

As much as I enjoy Italian produce and Italian food (particularly pizza in all its forms), I no more enjoy having variations on the Italian theme every day than I would be happy eating nothing but burgers, Greek, Indian or Chinese food each and every day.

Al

Edit: Just in case anyone from outside the immediate Teramo area is interested in visiting, the new shopping centre is right next to the dual carriageway that runs from the A14 autostrada Giulianova exit and turns into the A24 that runs through the Gran Sasso heading for L'Aquila and Roma.

PS
'A pizze se mangie che-i mmane'

La pizza si mangia con le mane

Pizza should be eaten with your hands

[quote=adriatica;83317]one of the benefits of living here i guess is that the restaurants in general source or produce local food and abruzzo is rightly proud of its traditions in that respect...

it can lead however despite various local variations to a certain lack of variety so despite this place being a sort of chain of restaurants i can recommend it... (also my wife who is Italian and tends to hold the view that you can only eat Neapolitan food in Naples... being from that area...)

anyway its rossopomodoro in the new shopping centre outside teramo... the chef and the food all comes from the naples area and most of the staff are either from there or the south... the oven is the same that you would see in a Neapolitan restaurant and it specialises in pizza... the one problem you might find is that there are none of the usual names... its all in dialect...you have to read the italian descriptions if you are not familiar with that very different language...

anyway my wife the italian describes it as the best pizza outside of naples and now almost refuses to go to the local abruzzo pizzeria restaurants... i cannot comment on pizzas because i don't like them much... although the one i had was good not being an expert i cannot really rave over the difference... however i also chose a course from the restaurant menu which was small sausages and a type of wild greens... which was pretty good too and i am looking forward over the years to getting through the rest of their menu...

price wise its a bit more expensive i guess than eating local agriturismo... but if you have a spare lunch time free rather than evening they do set menus which are around the e10 mark... which is pretty competitive...

everything is from that region... wine to water... bread to cheese... and its amazing the difference yo notice in the two styles of cooking having become habituated to the Abruzzo versions...

i reckon its worth a visit... although they do try things like talking you away from the house wine ... into the wine list... and you therefore have a choice... take their advice and pay a bit more... one wine they brought us was definitely worth it... so i cannot say they are not giving good advice because the house red is pretty light and has a bit of fizz...[/quote]

tHAT'S good news john,i shall definitely try out this place.Believe it or not pizza is the most expensive dish we eat because we travel up to 80-90 kms to eat neapolitan pizza because the pizza in the marche is pretty awful so by the time one's driven all that way it costs a fortune Teramo is slightly nearer now because of the tunnel at Roccafluvione so we'll give it a try.

Hey Sebastiano, we dont think pizza in Marche is awful!, in our little village they do a very good pizza, our local restaurant is very good, we often take friends and visitors there, and they have now expanded to include more outside seating for more customers, and they do take away in the evening, always busy and fun, and all those locals cannot all be wrong!
A

Well I looked it up ..... [url=http://www.rossopomodoro.it/default.aspx]Rossopomodoro Website[/url]

Yes john,listen to your wife :winki:

Last September my friend and his girlfriend flew over here, to Naples. He had been here before, she hadn't. She was looking forward to trying Italian style pizzas, so on our way home, we stopped off in Pompei, just outside Naples.

What an introduction to Italian cuisine! It was by far the worst pizza's we had ever had and not a great advert for Italy as a whole. My pizza as an example was undercooked, had the slightest patch of tomato on it and no cheese.

I know it wasn't strictly Naples, but close enough. Our local pizzerias do far superior pizzas to that travesty. We ended up apologising to my friends girlfriend as we had been harping on for weeks about Italian pizzas...

This is almost in Marche, but in Martinsicuro there is a great Neopolitan restaurant on Lungomare Europa called "Il Regno di Napoli". A friend of ours in Ascoli Piceno, born and raised in Naples, took us there last summer and said it has the best Neopolitan food in the area. We have gone back a couple times for the pizza and have always had great food.

I found this site which may be of interest to lovers of neapolitan food:

[url=http://www.averanapoli.it/inglese.htm]Pizzeria vera Napoli, come fare le pizze, ingredienti, impasto, forno. Consigli pratici[/url]