Sunday, February 12, 2012

Best . Pizza . Ever .


Pizza is from Italy, I bet everybody knows that, but do you know which Italian city where this pizza is originated? It's Napoli! No kidding and don't even try to google it. Hoho. In eat pray love movie (lousy movie but love the Italy part) where did Liz go to eat pizza? Napoli again. That is why I was super-ecstatic! Me and Yessi were so ready to try and indulge the best pizza in Italy. We've gathered several information from guide book and hostel's receptionist and we came up with 3 names: (1) Di Matteo; (2) Sorbillo; (3) Da Michele and we feel like we must try all those three. However, there's one little problem, we only stayed for weekend and on Sunday all those pizzerias will be closed, not only pizzerias, most restaurants, cafes, shops, almost everything is closed on Sunday, its gonna be like a dead city, am quoting my hostel's receptionist.

Okay, this way, guess we have to pick 2 out of 3 pizzeria because we only have 2 eating times, lunch and dinner. We start our journey that day strolling over Via Tribunali (Via means street in Italy), Napoli's main road which I admire so much especially with those sun-dried clothes hanging through the window. So authentically beautiful. After several minutes of searching finally we saw the sign of Di Matteo and without further ado we went there for an early lunch, it was only 11 am at that time. The place is quite small for a famous pizzeria, there are several people lined up for take away order while we decided to go inside. There were only 3 other customers there. We ordered tuna pizza (me) and mushroom pizza (Yessi) and one mineral water. Yes, when in Italy, eat like Italian! And boy we did, we ate 1 whole pizza each. It was by far the most delicious pizza I ever tasted, or as Italian said: "Perfetto!" I'm not just saying because we're in Napoli. The soft thin dough in the middle and crunchy in the crust, the toppings which are melted together on the dough, the tasty seasonings. The only drawback is the size could be bigger, hoho. I think I had a foodgasm that time. While we're eating however there was one east Asian guy asked us to take his picture, yeah he and his pizza with several poses! This is exactly what I like when there are other Asian tourist (especially from east Asian), we suddenly became the cooler one. Haha. We paid around EUR 6.5 each which totally worth it.

Tuna pizza

Yessi with her pizza
Mushroom pizza

After sightseeing, at night we decided to go to "Gino Sorbillo" pizzeria located also in Via Tribunali. A bit different with Di Matteo, this one is more like restaurant than pizzeria. The restaurant open at 7 pm and believe me, in Italy, they're very strict with this opening hours. It was not difficult to find this place since there were already a lot of people gathered around outside which can mean only one thing, waiting list. We came at 7.30 and we need to wait 30 minutes to get inisde and while we're waiting, more and more people kept coming. It's a 2 floor restaurant and we were placed at 2nd floor. I can see that the restaurant is very efficient with many waiters moved very quickly. Besides the standard pizza such as margherita and marinara they have 23 choices of pizza which represents the whole Sorbillo family, 2 pizzas named "Nonno Luigi" (Nonno = Granpa) and "Nonna Carolina" (Nonna = Granma), and other 21 pizzas were named after each children of theirs who happened to be pizzamakers. Their grandchildren dedicated this restaurant for them. What a sick family! (in a good way)

The crowd

Inside Gino Sorbillo
The Menu
We truly wanted to try one of those unique pizzas, however based on inquiry with the waiter almost all of them are not "halal" so we decided to order Margherita and Marinara. Again, one pizza for each. The portion of this pizza is massive, it's even bigger that the large plate, the dough even better that Di Matteo and the taste is super, but a bit incomparable with tuna or mushroom pizza we tasted earlier. However, I shamefully admit I couldn't finished the whole pizza, only about 80% of it and I really did try my best. I feel a bit nauseated probably because of too much cheese, you know what happen when we consume too much cheese. The price for Margherita and Marinara is quite cheap, about EUR 3-3.5 for that large size, but there is cover charge ("coperto") about 1.5 for each person.

Marinara
Margherita
Back at hostel we had this crazy idea to go to the 3rd pizzeria, "Da Michele" which will be closed at 11 pm. This pizzeria only serves 2 type of pizza; margherita and marinara which supposed to be very delicious, I mean, with only 2 choices, it can be so famous. Hah, if only we really put the idea into reality, my life will be complete and maybe I won't need to eat pizza ever again in my whole life. But sadly, it didn't happened, we didn't have that much courage and determination to do so and now there's only regret left. The next day, each day until now I have to live with such a hole in my heart (huehehehe, lebay) until I set foot and taste that "Da Michele" pizza in my mouth. Uuugghh.

To make it even worse, just about a month a go, I saw re-run of Eat Pray Love (only the Italy part for sure!), and just found out that the pizzeria where Liz and her friend were going is pizzeria "Da Michele". Yeah right, somehow I managed to see the name of the pizzeria even it was just a very short glimpse, less than one second. Oh, just great.

2 comments:

Yessi said...

Should we go back to Napoli this year? or next year?? *demiiiii ;p*

Niantiaulia said...

I will def be back! *Insya Allah, Aammiiinn ;)