After the Archeological Museum, we were starving. It was about 5pm. In our defense, we had flown in that morning and hadn’t stopped to eat anything but gelato.
But it was delicious gelato. I had coffee and pistachio. I’m preferential to coffee gelato, but the pistachio gave it a real run for the money.
But let’s be honest for a second, I eat at 5pm every evening. And I turn into a hungry-grumpysaurus if my meal gets pushed to 7pm, much less 9pm. I’m also in bed around 10pm. Real question: how will I ever cope in Spain?
Anyway.
We stopped by a restaurant on my list to visit (sometimes its helpful to have some ideas, but not feel pressured to make it to every place on your list)—Osteria Il Garum, which was sort of between the museum and our hotel, on Piazza Monteoliveto. Of course they weren’t serving dinner yet, but they offered to let us sit in their charming little restaurant (they also have awesome outdoor seating, but it was a bit chilly already that night).
Dear husband had the best choice on the menu (while the rest of our dishes were delicious, this was exceptional and stole the night). It was their grilled calamari, stuffed with pesto and eggplant and delicious spices.
The calamari wasn’t chewy or fishy. It was perfection. Try it! This was the best non-pizza meal of our time in Naples.
As for pizza, on our way back from Pompeii we decided to check out Da Michele, which has notoriously long lines. Well, it had a notoriously long line, and everyone was smoking outside. I’m sure it is delicious, but I wasn’t about to wait for an hour (expected wait time) while my lungs hated me. I’m sorry, but I don’t like pizza that much.
So we went across the street, and sat ourselves down at D’Angeli. I’m sure many people come here as a second choice after Da Michele’s is closed or too busy, but their pizza was by far the best we had in Naples. Their D’Angeli specials were fantastic (twisted dough, delicious cheese, veggies and prosciutto on the side…I could have eaten more and more…).
And just a reminder that in Naples, you are likely to be charged a fee for a table, and a fee for bread. The table fee is hard to avoid (but not as prevalent in the tourist areas where they really want to get you to sit down and just order something), but if you don’t want bread, just refuse it.
