DOS HERMANOS GO NAPOLI: JUST ONE (MORE) CORNETTO

I’m used to bad driving - I’ve been to Spain - but Naples takes the art to a whole new and impressive level. Faded zebra crossings are an inconvenience to be ignored, traffic lights seem to be advisory and one way streets can be two-way at some indeterminate point in time, usually when you’re crossing. And once you’ve managed to avoid the cars then you have to deal with one of the many scooters which buzz noisily whilst weaving along the pavements.

All great fun of course and combined with the piles of rubbish, hawkers selling old tat and decaying buildings with washing hanging from every window put me in mind of a European version of Kolkata. Of course it’s not really the same, this is Europe after all, but that’s the first, vivid impression I got walking (and getting lost) in the streets between Stazione Centrale and my billet in the Centro Storico.

It does lend the city a certain frisson however and though I was only there for a few days I thoroughly enjoyed my stay, in no small part due to the friendly locals, lack of tourists and the good food. Speaking of which once I’d checked in I was desperately in need of some nosebag - a ham sandwich on EasyJet not being enough to keep this fine specimen of a man in good working order.

Not long after dumping my bags the Time Out guide led me to a little place a few minutes away from where I was staying and surprisingly it proved to be a bit of a winner. Piccolo Ristoro was indeed a piccolo gaff. Located near the port and consisting of not much more than four walls and a roof it accommodated just a few papercloth-covered tables occupied by local workers. There was no menu so it was basically yours truly speaking a mix of very bad Italian (with a few Spanish words thrown in when completely stumped) and lots of pointing. Somehow I managed to get fed.

A small primi of Spaghetti Vongole had good pasta cooked al dente and mixed with a little chilli and some of the smallest sweetest clams I’d ever had. Simple and very delicious.

I didn’t know what the catch of the day was although it looked like Sea Bass. In truth it wasn’t grilled as expertly as you would find in Spain but was still good and the fish of course was very fresh. With a big basket of country-style bread and a mezzo of the House White the bill struggled to break the 15 Euro mark for good, honest food served with little fuss, but made with a lot of heart. I turned down the offer of dolci and instead dipped into the nearest bar for my first taste of real Italian coffee.

Enter a bar in Madrid towards the end of a Friday lunch and people will be finishing their wine, lighting a cigar and pouring the Orujos and Pacharans. In Naples they’ll be lining up the espressos. I’m not sure what it’s like in the rest of the country but here un caffè is the drug of choice and predictably it’s great: delivered out of hand-pumped machines it’s intense and strong and always served with a little glass of water. It’s addictive stuff and I soon got into the habit of popping into one of the many hole-in-the-wall bars for a quick fix.

The other habit I got into was always starting my day/afternoon/whenever with one of the city’s signature cakes. Like Sfogliatelle Riccia for instance, which are crisp pastry shells filled with Ricotta. Best served warm and sprinkled with icing sugar they’re the perfect accompaniment to a strong coffee. Coming from the “Have two of these and you really will see Naples and die” category are the Zeppoli: a fritter-like construction topped with custard cream. Or Babas, which were imported by the French but which are frequently eaten on the hoof: an alcohol-soaked sponge of loveliness.

More street food from the savoury end of the spectrum is available from friggatoria which specialise in deep-frying, well, just about anything including pizza (and you thought this was a Scottish invention). My favourite of these places was a newish joint in Mergellina which in addition to the usual Arancini and Crocche did baby Squid, cooked to order, which you could
munch out of a paper cone whilst sucking on a cold one.

Da Dora, a seafood restaurant, seems to be a bit of an institution among the Neapolitans if my visit on a Saturday lunchtime was anything to go by. The nice staff found me a table in a packed dining room where an older, well-dressed crowd were tucking into pasta and grilled fish. A big bowl of their Vongole were good but these specimens were larger and not as sweet as the ones I’d eaten the day before.

The restaurant’s special Linguini was a plate of that pasta covered with various shellfish in a tomato-based sauce. Enjoyable, but hardly life-changing. Ad Dora is pricey as well and I’m sure you’d get meals which were just as satisfying in cheaper trattorias.

Of course there are two other food groups which are essential to maintain body and soul in Italy. The first, Pizza, is a Naples staple and places were you can get a slice are almost as ubiquitous as coffee bars. Made quickly, with decent ingredients and priced realistically they’re the real fast food of the people. Everyone here eats pizza and although there are one or two places that attract the queues at lunchtime I suspect that they’re not going to be significantly better than the others.

I tried the two signature varieties, Margherita and Marinara, and while I wouldn’t put eating them up there with the most memorable foodie experiences of my life they’re a cheap and fun way to grab a bite, no more so than when eating them at tables packed with Neapolitan families on a Sunday lunchtime.

The second essential of any Italian meal is Ice Cream and after a Pizza most people will toddle off to their favourite Gelateria for a tub. Although I visited quite a few (of course I did) my favourite was Gay-Odin’s. Name aside which made me think of camp Viking gods, the gelato was terrific and seemed much softer than the stuff we get over here. Cheaper too, and I got a mini cone wafer.

Unfortunately, it could only be a brief visit to Naples so I felt that I only scratched the surface of what is a fascinating city. Similarly, I didn’t try as much food as I would have liked but what I did eat seemed to exhibit a simple elegance which spoke of confidence in the raw materials used. In other words there’s no need for obfuscation.

The bottom line for any place I visit is whether I would contemplate returning and in the case of Naples it would definitely be a Ciao e a presto.

PIZZA EAST: EAST END PIE

Listen, there’s no secret to a good Pizza: decent dough, not too much topping and an oven set to 11. Even cack-handed me has managed it at least once in my sorry-assed life. But you’d think making one was akin to squaring the circle the way some folk go on about it. Show me a Pizza bore and I’ll show you somebody who needs a decent hunk of protein in their life.

So then, Hermano, how come you ended up in Pizza East ? Huh ? Huh ? Simple, mi amigo, it was a dark and stormy, er, Saturday lunchtime and it was the nearest restaurant to Casa DH that we hadn’t already written about.

I’d only once been in the space that Pizza East now occupies when it was the completely forgettable T Bar. PE is a little more interesting. It’s all butch Manhattan loft style with exposed pillars and industrial-strength fittings but somehow still manages to be warm. I like very much. Something I didn’t like very much were the hoards of Happy Nappy Valley Families.

Fresh from terrorising innocent French tourists in Borough Market with their McLaren strollers (weren’t these supposed to be returned) they had now moved en masse to Pizza East and unleashed their little Jeroboams and Canastas on an unsuspecting pie-eating restaurant-goer, viz me.

Now I have no problem with kids in restaurants. My own nephew and niece have been eating with their parents since they were babies and their behaviour at table is impeccable. Here, however, it was as if the parents had deemed the restaurant a suitable venue for their spawn to express themselves and awaken their creatively which took the form of running around and screaming like banshees. It was like something out Cyra McFadden’s very funny book The Serial. Except I wasn’t laughing.

Eventually and inevitably there were tears and so all the nuclear units had to sod off and were replaced by a smattering of much quieter couples and groups who had wisely decided that de-cluttering could wait until another day. Then, and only then could I sit back and glug a glass of draught Prosecco with some fat green olives with a smattering of Almonds.

Speaking of which, this thing with the tumblers is getting out of hand. I want to drink my wine out of a proper glass not some thick glass mug. I saw proper flutes being used at another table so presumably they are available if you ask. I think this is some sort of cost saving measure which made sense when my food came.

It’s been a while since I last had a pizza in a restaurant but when did they get so expensive ? Save for two of the simplest varieties, all PE’s examples all came in at, or over the ten pound mark which for a few pence of dough and a quids worth of topping is a pretty blatant way of funding ones overheads.

The pizza itself, the Duck Sausage, was ok. The dough whilst it had charred and bubbled in an authentic manner was oddly tasteless. The clumps of minced meat didn’t taste particularly ducky and as the pizza was cooling the cheese coalesced unattractively. But it tasted, well, like pizza.

Starters were poor. Fried Calamari hadn’t been given a protective cover and ended up greasy – and not in a good way. It was also pretty chewy too. The accompanying aioli was more like a timid tartar sauce.

They’d tried to ape the St John dish with my other starter but the three thin halves of Bone Marrow (why not four ?) yielded very little marrow and the parsley salad was a sad joke. The bread was just wrong. Avoid.

Three big scoops of Gelato for dessert had a nice texture and tasted of the advertised ingredients but in a slightly odd way as if the they hadn’t been properly incorporated. So Mint and Chocolate Chip tasted as if you were eating raw leaves of Spearmint with shards of cooking chocolate and the Crème Fraiche one as if you were gulping spoonfuls of the stuff from a carton. Not especially nasty, just a bit odd. Pistachio was a lot better.

Objectively, the food is pretty mediocre at Pizza East but I ended up rather enjoying myself. The service was very friendly and accommodating, I liked the space and a combination of carbs and alcohol always seems to put people in a better mood than a salad. I rolled out of there quite happy.

Try and think of it then, as a place for people who believe they’ve outgrown Pizza Express and need to go to somewhere more gourmet. They probably don’t of course but then where’s the harm in catering to those people ?

For myself, well, after many years of denial I’m gradually coming round to HS’s view that it’s all just a load of snot on toast.

NEW YORK: DOMINICK’S & PATSY’S

I like restaurants that are named after people.

It is hardly a theory on which to base ones dining life, nor is it a fully realised one, but some of the best meals on this US part of the trip have been in restaurants which bear the owner’s name. Hot Doug’s, Pat and Geno’s and here in NYC, Katz, Yasuda, Barney Greengrass, Peter Luger (more on these last two to come)

On Thursday, I visited two other places that bear the name of their original owner and which, in their different ways represent what New York dining means to so many people when they visit the city.

First of all, a trip to Arthur Avenue in The Bronx with my good friend, Sandy whose knowledge of matters New York is beyond compare.

We met in that most glorious of testaments to NYC’s past, Grand Central Terminal. Fully restored less than ten years ago, it is now, without doubt in my mind, New York’s finest building.

From there, the short train journey our to The Bronx and Arthur Avenue, home of a large Italian community and, arguably, the progenitor of the school of old style cooking we know as American Italian “red sauce”.

Now, just as with Chicken Tikka Masala in the UK and its relationship to Indian food, American Italian has little to do with anything you would find in Italy but is more a creation of the immigrant population for the local community.

Increasingly, I was interested to find out, a new wave of immigration from Albania has hit the area and many of the restaurants are, though still serving ‘Italian” food, owned by the latest influx. We did see one or two Albania restaurants, so I guess, there are now enough of them to be able to support their own restaurants.

After mooching around the stores and stopping for some delicious, meaty clams with a little hot sauce, we dipped into Dominick’s for lunch. It is an old stalwart of the neighbourhood and everything you would expect of such a place.

Hustling and bustling, the tables are communal, menus verbal and charging methods vague (I am told that the bill goes up if you have expensive shoes)

The food too is what you would expect with a pasta coming in a shrimp sauce that was heavy and, while quite tasty, hardly elegant. The same too for a slightly stewed chicken Scarlapino (sp?)

With a glass of what I call “context wine” because it may do the job at the time but, if you had it under normal circumstances, you would spit it half way across the room, the bill was about $40 for the two of us which Sandy thought was over priced.

Was it any good? Not really. I can see why places like these are popular with an older generation, but dying out as a new more discerning crowd push for better. It was, however, interesting to try and as alien to me as any of the food I tried in China or Japan.

I can’t imagine any reason to ever go back there.

That evening, I met up with a publishing chum, Beth and her husband, Peter and they decided to try and persuade me that my long held belief that pizza was “snot on toast” was off the mark by visiting one of their favourite haunts, Patsy’s in the heart (I think) of Spanish Harlem. It is particularly known for having a wood fired oven and decent ingredients

After a large and quite tasty house salad our two pizzas, about the size of a small dining table arrived, one with garlic, anchovies (on my bit anyway) and basil and the other, with ricotta and sun dried tomatoes.

I ate a couple of slices without keeling over and frothing at the mouth and I can certainly see why people love pizza and that these were decent enough examples (with the exception of the sun dried tomatoes which were sweet enough to give you diabetes) but, I am afraid it was no Damascene experience and I still think that pizza is a pretty vile concoction that is best left to Americans who, arguably have done more to promulgate its awfulness than the Italians who should take little blame.

We followed with some desserts that were heavy but not bad (well the one I tried was, the other containing coffee which really would make me fall to the floor in a frothing fit) and, in yet another display of American generosity, Beth & Peter picked up the tab and then walked me all the way across town to the Upper West Side where I was staying.

So, I tried two things that were, as the locals like to say in that annoying way “so New York”

If was fun to hang out with my chums, but I would probably be forced to say “ So What New York?” about these two food experiences, at least.

Next, Barney & Peter, but more of that later