Popular culture being what it is, we couldn't miss visiting L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele, described in impossibly glowing terms in Elizabeth Gilbert's bestseller, "Eat, Pray, Love." The white-tiled pizzeria dates from 1930, but according to octogenarian Luigi Condurro, his family started the pizza-making dynasty in 1870. Da Michele is a purist's pizzeria. It makes two varieties: marinara with tomato sauce and mozzarella, and margherita, which adds fresh basil on top.
Pizza at da Michele was good (though no pizza could live up to Gilbert's rhapsodic praise), but the camera-toting hordes, us included, detracted from the experience of watching Neapolitans interact with their pies. Unlike Gilbert, who devoured two pies here, we decided to branch out.
Across the square at Trianon da Ciro, they've been making pizza since only 1923 and have a long list of toppings (mushrooms, eggs, sausage, prosciutto . . . ). For the indecisive, the Gran Trianon piles on eight ingredients, although the simpler Four Seasons is the choice of many diners, including a businessman in an impeccably tailored suit. When his pie arrived at the table, he unbuttoned the lower buttons of his crisp white shirt, tucked in his tie, lifted his knife and fork, and dispatched his pizza without mishap.
At Europeo, another spot with a pizza-making lineage going back to 1870, the eponymous house specialty includes pickled cherry peppers and fried zucchini, but most people stick to the simpler margherita. The crust is just right for eating "libretto" style, where the diner cuts a big slice from the pie, folds it up like a book with the gooey parts tucked inside, and lifts it to the mouth.
Donatella Mattozzi, cousin of the owner, had the procedure down pat. She was dining with her father, Antonio Mattozzi, a history professor, who recalled working in his family's restaurant when he was a young boy during World War II. Under the German occupation, they were reduced to eating potatoes and chestnut flour. "The Americans brought wheat," he said of the Allied occupation. "We could make pizza again."
