starita - napoli, italy

Rating:  9 / 10

You know that feeling when you've just spent four hours scaling what you thought was the top of the mountain only to find you reached the summit of a smaller peak before the intended target? Your energy is spent, but you somehow find the hidden reserves to push forward and conquer the impossible?

​Today was like that, just in a pizza kinda way.

After negotiating the metro, masked and ready, spat out into suburban alleyways, google map pointing in firm directions, passers by voicing "Salve", scooters within an inch of taking your hip out, the endless cacaphony of Napoli's carbon monoxide symphony, laundry blowing in ancestral winds above, the skies clear but for airplane vapour trails and the sun watching with restraint. Finally, we ended up standing outside Starita.

​Headfirst into the ordering room, kind faces and frantic chefs stretching, clothing and baking dough in routined haste. Payments rendered, asked to wait outside due to current protocols, five minutes later summoned to the door and handed the keys to the kingdom, the revelatory orb of sins forgiven, and outside we march turning the corner and prying open the box to reveal the deep luxury of simple love.

Crispy, airy, spotted dough caressing sweet but not candy tomato sauce, silky cheese lay in waiting and basil bitten by the tempers of woodfire ovens. 

The streets turned down in volume and silence permeated the screaming sensations of the mouth. Tongues roving in joy. Finally, the holiest of holies had been wrestled free and enjoyed in the alleyways of an insane city.

What could possibly, possibly be better than this? Fifteen minutes later, Starita was dethroned by a pizzeria in the same neighborhood, but somehow with occult powers beyond those that reside here. But that, my friends, is another story.

For a few brief minutes in the eternal mantle of time, Starita was the diamond in the golden crown of baked dough.

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.