prigiobbo - napoli, italy

Rating:  6 / 10

Quartieri Spagnoli is slammed with authentic Italian restaurants trying to lure in the unknowing tourists. Authentic can only get you so far. If the food is great it's a match made in heaven, but in the case of Prigiobbo it was more a temptation to exaggerate the taste just to fit the narrative.

​In short, the pizza was good but not great.

What Prigiobbo does have in spades is authenticity. The four elderly dough slingers welcome you into the dining room untouched by modern finishings, thrust a menu at you and scuttle off to deliver the order to the chef. Woodfire pizza ovens are fed with raw dough and harvest their catch just a little too early for my liking.

I'm one of those SCORCH THAT PIZZA guys, and love nothing more than dark black holes all around the crust and a deep bake underneath. This was cooked unevenly, both on the sides and beneath, and the chew was not the chew of a well risen and baked dough, but rather of an underdone one.

Tomato sauce and cheese-wise it was totally acceptable and the prices were the lowest I saw in Naples, but overall I'd recommend dropping by here only if you are seriously in town for a week and have the time to spare on a wonderful establishment that churns out fairly great pizza.

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.