I should have written this post ages ago. Now Napoli and Sorrento seem so far away. But it's really only been a few weeks since we visited Southern Italy. We flew to Napoli and then headed straight down the coast to Sorrento. We spent four nights in a wonderful villa in the neighboring village of Sant' Agnello, a good choice since Sorrento is quite full of tourists. The last night of our trip we spent in Napoli and we were glad it was only one night since it's not a beautiful city. If they fixed it up a bit, it'd do wonders as the architecture is quite nice. Just the paint is chipped and old, and there are piles of trash everywhere! Funny thing was that the trash didn't smell even though it was still reasonably warm weather.
I was honestly quite disappointed by the food in Italy. Generally speaking, that is. This is due to the fact that I (or should I say we?) have been putting Italian food on a pedestal, which at one time was probably well-deserved. Not anymore. Italy is also jumping on the bandwagon of the fast life, which immediately shows effects in food and how it is prepared and what its ingredients are. Hence, not all mozzarella is bufala (the kind made from buffalo milk), not all tomatoes are vine-ripened, not all basil is freshly picked. Wouldn't it be nice if it was?
Luckily I was still able to find some gems on our trip. For example the Trattoria da Emilia in Sorrento (Marina Grande, 62). This charming restaurant on the harbor is just what I like: unpretentious, friendly and serving simple, fresh and delicious food. We started off with salads: mixed and caprese (but not with bufala), then we had gnocchi alle vongole (gnocchi with clams) and calamari fritti (fried calamari). Everything was quite good even the red house wine we ordered.
We ate at this trattoria once more since we liked it so much. The second time aroudnd we had cozze (mussels), spaghetti pomodoro (spaghetti with tomato sauce) and assorted fried fish. This meal was delicious as well. At this point I have to go off on a tangent about one of the worst food words for me. It is indeed the mussels, cozze. The reason this word is so bad is that is sounds exactly like the German word "Kotze", which means vomit. Not exactly a word I like to associate with food even if consumption of cozze may sometimes lead to Kotze. Ugh, enough of that.
Unfortunately we didn't find any more gems in Sorrento, on the island of Capri, or along the Amalfi coast (I'm sure with more time, we would have found something!), but they did serve pretty good pizza at Sant' Antonino in Sorrento (Via Santa Maria delle Grazie, 6).
In Napoli we fortunately found some good food at Gran Caffè Gambrinus right near the Palazzo Reale, where we ended up for lunch. The thing I noticed right away was that we were surrounded by German speaking people, not exactly what I like to hear when on vacation (to those who don't know: I'm German-American and may speak freely about both Germans and Americans!). But that's just how it is with Gran Caffès that make there way into every tourist guide. The worst part was when the 5 German ladies at the neighboring table started arguing with the waiter about who had paid what. In the typical German manner each lady had paid for her own coffee and cake (instead of having one person pay the bill and figuring it out later) and in the end there was confusion about one piece of chocolate cake not accounted for. That was a real German-tourist-on-vacation-moment that made me wince and sink deeper into my chair. I wish I hadn't witnessed that. So glad Swiss Germans, who do share some similarities in behaviors with Germans, are not afflicted with that characteristic. Anyways, back to the important part, the food! It was expensive but we had a really good caprese (this time with bufala!) and a good pizza. For drinks I had their lovely caffè freddo con panna which was like a sweetened coffee sorbet topped with whipped cream. Delicious! And mister had caffè nocciola, which was pretty good but you could tell the hazelnut flavor wasn't coming from real hazelnuts. There it was again: my disappointment with the declining food of Italy...
The day of our departue we had all morning and some of the afternoon to wander the streets of Napoli. We ended up having lunch in the Galleria Umberto at Fratelli la Bufala. There we had a pizza reale and gnocchi with tomato sauce and bufala. YUMMMMM!!!!
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