dA michele - napoli, italy

Rating:  7 / 10

Nothing more can be written about this place that hasn't already been bludgeoned to death in a million tourist guides, youtube video's and influencer blogs. 

My mission was to find the best pizza for my tastes and specifications, so inevitably I had to take one for the team on a few mediocre spots to be able to have a decent scale with which to measure the positives and negatives.

This was the second Neopolitan style pizza I ate in Naples, the first being Di Matteo which was a solid baptism. Di Matteo wasn't perfect, the sauce had a slightly acidic taste that threw off the balance, but overall I prefered it to this famous rival.

Everyone and their mother has opinions on what makes a good pizza, the chew, the crisp, the crunch, the spotting, the blonde, the saucy, the dry, the greasy, the bare, the extra cheesy, the scattered approach. Nobody is going to ever agree, so all we can do is appeal to our own palate and leave it at that.

For me this pizza was too wet. The oil and sauce and cheese leechings were such that the pie became instantly soggy and veered into the "knife and fork" pizza, as so many do in Napoli. I prefer mine taken down a notch ala Da Attilio / Concettina ai Tre Santi, and therefore would recommend steering clear of this institution unless you are one of those people who pales at the thought of being wrapped in idle conversation in a bar and asked "Have you tried Da Michele in Napoli?". If you want to be able to answer "YES" then get it over and done with and head to the other two spots for a far, far superior pizza.

​IMO

These recommendations are just personal opinions based on my palate, things change, chefs get fired or replaced, places open-close, relocate, so take it all with a pinch of MSG  and discover your own gems too. But please do try a few of these, they have been researched exhaustively.