Eating pizza and seafood in Naples
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 lasso into a shimmering, spinning saucer a few millimetres thick, hovering over his hand. This is la gestualita, "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, 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 McDonald's.
"But there's nobody 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 Mattozzi, in Piazza Carita, both of which are members of Vera Pizza Napoletana, the organisation set up to protect the provenance of the pizza.)
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 among 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 Lewis describes centres on 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. As an NCO in the Field Security Service, Lewis 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.
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.
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, 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 30 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 alle 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 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 in Naples. Take a stroll down the Via Pignasecca. 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 provoke the vendors into an early grave. Halfway down the street, at Tripperia Fiorenzano, there is a shop selling nothing but tripe, the display of cows' 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 Carita and Mattozzi'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. 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 della Scimmia next door, where the seasonal flavours include blood-orange sorbet, and the specialities boast a banana dipped in molten chocolate.
I wondered if there was such a thing as a modern, foodie restaurant in Naples. We did find a couple, such as the tiny Coco Loco, but the gulf between it and Mattozzi 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 guidebooks might steer you towards one pizzeria rather than another, 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 McDonald's and Domino's aspire to: the difference is that here, it works.
Gelateria della Scimmia (Piazza Carita 4, 081 552 0272)
Ristorante Mattozzi (Piazza Carita 2, 081 552 4322): about £28 for two, without wine