Another one bites the crust

Naples may not be the real birthplace of pizza but they know how to do it right. No slicing, no fancy toppings, no textured cheese. The rest of us can only drool

- VIR SANGHVI

I have been going to Italy - which I love - for longer than many readers of Brunch have been alive. And yet, somehow I had never been to Naples, one of Italy's most famous cities.

When I finally did go, last week, I didn't go because of Naples' beauty or because I wanted to see Mount Vesuvius. I went for the most mundane of reasons.

I went for the pizza.

Yes, really. So I went on a pizza pilgrimage last week. And I ate so much pizza that it got to the stage that by the end of the trip I couldn't face another pizza. Here's what I learned.

First, pizza in Naples is nothing like the pizzas you get delivered from Pizza Hut or Domino's. It is not even like the Neapolitan pizzas you get in restaurants around the world.

Most of the pizzas I ate in Naples were relatively simple affairs. They were large, typically, around the size of a dinner plate, but not sharing-pizza large. They didn't usually come pre-sliced so you had to cut them yourself. Locals ate them with their fingers, sometimes with each slice folded up to four times. (The quadruple fold is a thing here.)

Americans like the term 'pizza pie' because their pizzas are really large pies, prized for their toppings. In Naples, pizza is not a pie. It is rarely judged by the toppings which, when they exist, are sparse and hardly predominating. Instead, it is the quality of the basic ingredients: Dough, tomatoes, cheese, buffalo mozzarella, etc. Unlike American pizzas which are made for home delivery, this is less a pie and more like a soufflé.