August 29th-September 12th, 2019
OK, this is going to be a long post. I hope you stick with us. We went to Italy for two weeks and ate A LOT of pizza. When we got back, the first question we got from our friends and family was: was the pizza the best you ever had? The answer is YES. We love our New Haven pizza, and our New York slices, but overall, the pizza in Italy is hard to beat. We’ll walk you through our favorites.
Venice
Venice isn’t known for their pizza. Being right on the water, they are most known for their seafood. So we didn’t expect to eat much pizza in Venice. However, we did find a unique piece of pizza there that we’ve never seen anywhere else. It was called a “pizzaccia” from Antico Forno.
The pizzaccia has a very thick crust – a focaccia slab, topped with sauce and cheese. It looks like it would be overpowering and heavy, but the slice was actually lighter than a traditional Sicilian slice. Maybe because the cheese is so fresh, and wasn’t overloaded. There was so much flavor! We could see why the line was out the door!
Florence
We got to Florence next, and we found ourselves at Sud on our first night. It’s located in an upstairs market in a warehouse, and even though the market itself was closed by the time we got there for dinner, the upstairs pizza and bar were still packed.
We ordered two pizzas here – a Capri with fresh tomatoes and cold cheese, put on top of the crust after it cooked, and a regular margherita. These were some of the best Neapolitan pies that we had ever eaten at this point, and we were just getting started. The crust was fluffy and a touch salty, perfectly cooked.
Rome
Our first night in Rome we went to Seu Pizza Illuminati. This was right down the street from our hotel in Travestere, and we were glad that we got there early enough to grab some tables at the bar. The restaurant has a really modern feel and was very family-friendly.
We got two pizzas here too – this one with cherry tomatoes and shaved cheese, and a second with burrata and spreadable spicy sausage. We’ve generally just heard it called ‘Nduja but apparently in Italy they just call it spreadable sausage in the translation. The chef here is known as Rome’s most creative chef to watch, and the restaurant’s name is meant to invoke bright ideas.
The next day in Rome we had a busy pizza day. We were doing a lot of walking, and ended up getting a bit hungry near the Trevi fountain. We spotted a decent looking slice shop, Pizza in Trevi.
These were our first slices of pizza in Italy served al taglio. This means “by the cut”, and the pizzas are baked in rectangular trays, then sold by weight of the slice cut. We tried one with a spicy tomato sauce and one with eggplant, and they were kind enough to cut the slices in half for us to split.
After some more wandering, we made the trek across town to Bonci Pizzarium. We thought that since it was located outside of all of the tourist attractions and main area of the city, it would probably be a quieter stop. We were totally wrong. This place was PACKED. We grabbed a number, and then settled in to wait for our turn to order. There are no seats, just a counter, and there were about 20 different pizzas to choose from. We had a lot of time to think about our order, and it was not an easy decision to make.
We ended up with a few slices here, after about 45-60 minutes of waiting. Our favorites were a tomato sauce and fresh cherry tomato, and a fresh cheese drizzled with oil to finish. These were simple slices, but Bonci has a variety of unique slices as well. I don’t think we’ve ever waited so long for a couple of slices of pizza, but we are not surprised that they are called the best slices in Rome.
Our last stop in Rome was for an early-ish dinner (by Italian standards, anyway). We ended up at La Montecarlo. This restaurant has been around for about 30 years and serves the other traditional “Roman style” pizza – super thin crust.
We heard that the mushroom and onion pizza was the way to go here, so that’s what we ordered, along with some pastas. As you can see, the crust is cracker-thin, the sauce is light, as is the cheese. It probably wouldn’t have been able to fill us up on it’s own after all of the walking we did, but as a side to the pastas it was perfect.
Naples
From Rome, we went to Naples. We arrived around 11 am, dropped our bags at our hotel, and went right to get pizza at L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele. This is THE place to get pizza and it’s called the best in the world. If you read my post on the best pizza in London, you may recognize the name. There are now a few locations around the world, including a recent opening in Los Angeles.
At 11:30, when we got there, there was already a huge crowd of people waiting for tables. We got lucky and they opened up the second room just as we got there, so we got seats right away. You don’t get a whole table to yourself here as it’s family-style seating. You also only get two options for pizza – margherita or marinara. The pizzas come quickly, and they are LARGE. Not that we had any problems finishing them. It’s also surprisingly cheap. Easily one of the best Neapolitan pies we’ve ever had. The sauce was fresh, the crust perfectly charred and soft, and just the right amount of cheese.
For dinner, we continued our pizza tour of Naples and went to Sorbillo. We showed up here before opening time, and there was already a line up the street. Sorbillo also has family seating, so we were seated in the first wave. There are many more options for pizza here – it’s a little overwhelming. It was hard to pick just two.
One of the pizzas we ended up ordering was a margherita with ricotta, and the other one had ‘nduja. I don’t remember the names in Italian. These may have been better than L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele, but it was honestly way too hard to say which was better. They were both amazing. Truly the best day of pizza we’ve had in our lives.
The following night we went for a long walk across town to 50 Kalò. This was recommended to me by a colleague. It was a lot quieter, and we got a nice table outside. We had a marinara with parm cheese, and a broccoli and sausage.
The crust on these was airier, but the pizzas were the same size as the other two pizzas that we’d had in Naples (all larger than American Neapolitan-style). There were also a lot of options to choose from here, but we felt like we could take our time and relax a bit more without having the rush of the long line building behind us.
Our final pizza was a late-night fried pizza from Pizzeria Di Matteo. Pizza fritta is pretty common here, and it is like a fried calzone. We ordered a traditional one, which came with provolone, ricotta, tomato sauce, and some type of bacon.
You can eat in here, but a lot of people take their fried pizza (and fried other things, like arancini) to go. So that’s what we did. We only got through a few bites of it, though, before we realized we were stuffed and then we saved the rest for an early breakfast the next day.
And that’s it! We definitely ate our fair share of pizza on this trip, but we also ate a lot of pasta, and gelato!
We’re not sure if we’ll get back to Italy anytime soon, but if we missed any good places, please let us know!
