Pizzeria Brandi

Naples, Italy (The Joy of Food) — I ate some life-changing pizza and then I watched a woman get mugged. That can sum up a lot of days in Naples.

Whatever Italy’s third largest city may lack in the way of common decency it makes up for in its food, a place that over and over again gets recognized for having the world’s greatest pizza. And when we look back on the history of the grand dame of all pizza — the margherita — the name popping up as making the first is Pizzeria Brandi.

In 1889 when Queen Margherita, wife of King Umberto I, summoned a special meal for the royal family, she was presented with a piece of hot bread with some boiling stuff on top, striking in its simplicity and featuring the colors of the Italian flag in the medley of tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. The recipe was a hit and quickly turned into an Italian staple, one that is world-famous today.

In these pebbled backstreets, pizza is the emblematic food of the people sort of like the corn cart or the hot dog stand you’ll find on every New York City block, often sold at walk-up establishments with wood-fired ovens crammed into the unlikeliest of spaces. You can buy slices or whole pies for a few euro from such vendors, served piping hot and folded into quarters like a wallet (al portafoglio) to keep the boiling cheese and sauce from scalding your face or fingers. Brandi has a to-go counter for exactly this.

If you dine in, the pizza emerges perfectly blistered from an oven nearly as old as time, hand-stretched and served uncut and bubbling hot. This pizza, with blobs of cheese, whole basil leaves, a swirl of olive oil, and San Marzano tomatoes instead of sauce, is definitive. It’s an exercise in nostalgia, a taste of pure ingredients the way they can only exist in Italy. 

The country’s most prized cheese farms are a few towns away, where herds of buffalo live a life of leisure in scenic expanses and contribute to the region’s massive produzione della mozzarella di bufala (buffalo mozzarella production). A Caprese salad never tasted so good as it does here, a few slivers of this creamy mozzarella, ripe tomatoes grown in Vesuvius-rich soil, and wisps of fresh basil hand-picked from local hillsides.

The pasta is also first-rate, the sort of heaping, comforting dishes that melt in your mouth, not that you’ll have room for one of these after stuffing yourself full of pizza. But if you do, the gnocchi alla sorrentina is something special to be enjoyed in these parts, basically a tub of gnocchi bolstered by a bed of bubbling cheese. 

For a city that makes a habit out of crowding tons of stuff into the tiniest of spaces, you might be surprised by how sprawling Pizzeria Brandi actually is. The footprint takes over all of two floors with the famed pizza oven outside and across the street. And if you opt to sit at one of the outdoor tables, you’ll have a front row seat to the everyday color of the city — stuff like locals beating each other up, crazy Italian drivers running pedestrians down on sidewalks, street urchins peddling tourists for money, or thieves running from the scene of a crime. It’s all in a day’s work.

You might also be surprised by the price of pizza in Naples: all this excellence can be had for around 5 euro a pop. Brandi is one of the pricier places in town at an average of 7 euro for a dine-in experience, but take a pizza to go and the price drops to the 5 euro more common across the city.

Written by Joy

Thanks for reading. The Joy of Food blog celebrates eating well, traveling often, and living la dolce vita. San Diego, California is home base, but thoughts are from all over. Reviews and photos help to highlight wonderful (or not) food experiences from around the world.

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