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BBC News
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
A pizza chef's guide to the best pizza in Naples
The Neapolitan-born expert pizza maker believes that to understand pizza, you need to eat it in the place it was invented. Here are his favourite places to eat pizza in Naples. Neapolitan-born master pizzaiolo (pizzamaker) Daniele Uditi has lived in the US for more than 15 years. But, "it doesn't matter where in the world I am, I will always be from Naples," he tells the BBC. Like Uditi, pizza was born in the famously chaotic seaside Italian city; its invention widely credited to chef Raffaele Esposito who is believed to have created the white, red and green dish in tribute to the colours of the newly unified nation's flag. Uditi, who served as a judge in Hulu's 2022 pizza competition show, Best in Dough, notes that though pizza is beloved – and found in many forms – worldwide, he believes you've never truly had it until you've had it in its birthplace. "To understand [pizza], you go to Naples, and you eat pizza the way it's supposed to be, al portafoglio," says Uditi, referring to Neapolitan street pizza that is folded twice on its sides "wallet-style". "Eating a pizza in the place that it was invented with all the sounds of the city, seeing another Neapolitan eat it while on the phone and walking with an overflowing pizza in the box because it stretched too big." Can pizza be too big? "It's not perfect," admits Uditi. "Neapolitan pizza is an artisanal product, so sometimes you don't find the perfect circle. I think it's a perfect representation of the city. Naples is not a perfect circle. Naples has good things and defects, but when you take a bite, everything makes total sense." Here are Uditi's top six pizzas in Naples. 1. Best all-around: Pizzeria La Notizia Enzo Coccia 53 High up in Naples's leafy, green Capodimonte quarter, Pizzeria La Notizia 53, helmed by chef Enzo Coccia, is a magnet for visitors from every walk of life, says Uditi. "You can find a university professor, a lawyer, or you can find a student, you can find a couple they just want to enjoy themselves." Despite Coccia's reputation for inventive pizzas like one of his recent springtime offerings, topped with courgette, tomatoes and thyme, Uditi says the humble pizzeria's biggest draw is undoubtedly their classic Margherita. "You go there for the Margherita," he says. "The Margherita is special, because he has the perfect balance between the three ingredients… Everything comes together, nothing overpowering." Website: Via Michelangelo da Caravaggio, 53, 80126 Naples NAPhone: 081 714 2155Instagram: @enzococcia_lanotizia 2. Best montanara: Antonio Starita Antonio Starita, a historic pizzeria just outside the gritty Rione di Sanità neighbourhood, is what Uditi calls: "another staple in Naples". But not just for its pizza – for its montanara. Montanara – deep-fried dough topped with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil – is a beloved Neapolitan street food. Uditi loves Starita's: "the way he fries the dough, it's never oily. It's super light. And the sauce is cooked just right. On the montanara, the sauce has to be pre-cooked, right? So it's almost like a sugo [long-simmered sauce]." "Also, the pizza he does is spectacular," adds Uditi. "And he's just a character. [When I was a kid], I used to see him behind the counter… he was one of the people that inspired me to be a pizza chef. He doesn't talk that much. He speaks through his product." Uditi's hack for beating the beloved spot's oftentimes-long queues: "Go off hours. Don't go straight when they open up, because you're for sure not gonna find a spot. I'll go around early afternoon or late at night when they're almost about to close." Website: Via Materdei, 27/28, 80136 Naples NAPhone: 081 544 1485Instagram: @antoniostarita 3. Best for new takes on classics: Pizzeria Concettina ai Tre Santi Heading deeper into Rione Sanità, Uditi enthusiastically recommends the generational Pizzeria Concettina ai Tre Santi; now run by the original owner, Concettina's, grandson, Ciro Oliva: "Ciro Oliva is one of the youngest pizza chefs in Naples, but he acts like a seasoned one. You can tell that Neapolitan traditions are safe in the hands of this guy, because he's gonna take care of it, but also never make it boring." Apart from the classics, the upscale pizzeria serves highly inventive pizzas like the Fondazione San Gennaro – a mammoth pie topped with salami, smoked provola cheese and crumbled tarallo 'nzogna e pepe (traditional Neapolitan lard-enriched, almond-studded crackers). "He was the first one to think about not just the pizza itself, but [giving] you texture," explains Uditi. "Pizza can be a soft experience, right? He said, 'I'm gonna disrupt that a little bit. Why don't we put tarallo 'nzogna e pepe on pizza?' It worked." Website: Via Arena della Sanità, 7 Bis, 80137 Naples NAPhone: 081 290037Instagram: @concettina3santi 4. Best female-run: Isabella de Cham Just 100m from Concettina ai Tre Santi is Isabella de Cham, renowned for its pizza fritta – a deep-fried calzone, traditionally stuffed with ricotta, cicoli (pork cracklings) and black pepper – and her daring degustazione (tasting menu) of deep-fried appetizers. "Everything you eat there is just unbelievable," says Uditi of the chic-yet-cosy eatery. "I like the fact that Isabella is a woman. Pizza fritta used to be made [only] by women; they would make it and sell it on the street. We need more women in this job; we need some gentle hands, some different approaches. That's what I find in Isabella de Cham's approach to pizza fritta. [She] makes one of the lightest that you'll ever have in your life. It's unbelievable. And then she always comes up with new flavours. I tell her to make me a classic pizza with cicoli, ricotta and pepper but then she comes out and, 'No, Daniele, you have to taste this.' And everything comes together so good that you wouldn't believe that you are eating a tasting menu of fried food and feeling so light." Website: Via Arena della Sanità, 27, 80137 Naples NAPhone: 081 1863 9669Instagram: @isabelladechampizzafritta 5. Best for gourmet pizza: Diego Vitagliano "Diego Vitagliano would be the fine dining approach to the cuisine," says Uditi. "But also the way he thinks about the dough." Diego Vitagliano's pizzeria, found in Naples's romantic Santa Lucia neighbourhood with outposts in Bagnoli and Pozzuoli, embraces new textures with a nod to tradition, often topping pizzas with ingredients found in classic Neapolitan dishes like pasta e patate (pasta, provolone and potato stew). "It's just about him telling the history of Neapolitan cuisine by using the pizza as a vehicle," says Uditi. "For me, that's the genius there." But, notes Uditi, "His classic Margherita will be one of the highlights of his menu. Sometimes people forget. They go there and say, 'Yeah, I want to try these new things'. And then he does it on purpose. In the degustazione, he [brings out the] Margherita last, because he wants to remind you, 'Yeah, this is fun, but this is what you came for'." Website: Via Santa Lucia, 78 - 80 - 82, 80132 Napoli NA, ItalyPhone: 081 1858 1919Instagram: @diegovitagliano_pizzerie 6. Best for a day trip: I Masanielli Though pizza was invented in Naples, the city's dintorni (outskirts) are also well-distinguished in the art of artisanal pizza making. Take a day trip to the town of Caserta – home to the stunning Reggia di Caserta and Uditi's top overall pizza pick; I Masanielli, chef Francesco Martucci's gourmet pizzeria. "Francesco Martucci is a nutcase!" says Uditi. "I used to go to school in Caserta and [I would eat his pizza after class]. I grew up with his pizza and now I'm a pizza chef as well." Though the nostalgia factor is strong for Uditi, he is also an enthusiastic fan of Martucci's gourmet offerings. "Sometimes he takes one ingredient and just that ingredient will be the highlight of the pizza," says Uditi. "For his 'five onion pizza', you have a pizza with onions treated in five different ways. It's one of the most delicious bites that you're gonna have in your life… [and] He was the first one to introduce three ways of cooking dough; steamed, fried and then baked. And then he used to make this pizza with scallops and, like, sea moss powder on the top. And pollen." "On a pizza!" marvels Uditi. "On a freaking pizza!" Website: Viale Giulio Douhet, 11, 81100 Caserta CEPhone: 0823 741284Instagram: @imasanielli BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers. -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Los Angeles Times
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
L.A.'s hardest reservation is this new Italian supper club in West Adams
'This is not a restaurant,' says Daniele Uditi, addressing a crowd of 32 diners in a spacious warehouse in West Adams on a recent Sunday evening. 'It might look like it, but it's not.' Uditi wants to set the record straight, as soon as you sit down for a meal at Le Le Dinner Club. The warehouse is outfitted with tables facing a kitchen that looks like the set of a daytime talk show. It's meant to be a stand-in for Uditi's home. Steam billows from big silver pots on the stove and the fire from three Gozney ovens warms the room. 'When you go to a restaurant, you never meet the chef, never understand the story behind the food,' he says. 'I want to be close to you and explain dish by dish and, hopefully, make you very full.' In a city full of chefs making Italian food, Uditi is a rarity. He cooks like a grandma, with his most important culinary training having taken place at his family's restaurant in Naples and his aunt's bakery in Caserta. At Le Le, he's shedding and shunning the notions of a Los Angeles Italian restaurant, where Italian is often a monolith of red sauce, pizza and pasta. Uditi introduced Angelenos to his unique style of Neapolitan pizza at Pizzana. He's to credit for the cacio e pepe wave that swept the nation, with restaurants everywhere copying and riffing on his cacio e pepe pizza. His small Brentwood pizzeria is now a verifiable chain, with locations throughout Los Angeles and Texas. At Le Le, Uditi is cooking food that reflects the regionality of his family home in Campania, and he's doing it in a setting that's the antithesis of a chain restaurant. What started as a recurring dinner party at his home in Simi Valley is now a two- to four-times-a-month supper club with 6,000 people on the waitlist. Dinner is $250 per person and includes wine pairings. 'I love pizza, but I wanted to expand the menu to truly Neapolitan dishes,' he says. 'I wanted to tell a story of where I come from, which is the Campania region, which is not really highlighted in L.A. There is a lot of Tuscany, a lot of Northern Italian, but nobody really has the southern home-cooked feeling.' In sommelier Ferdinando Mucerino, Uditi found a fellow Neapolitan with a desire to share the riches of the region and a business partner for his new venture. The two guide diners through a 2 ½-hour party with wine pairings, designed to feel more like a meal at a friend's house than L.A.'s next great restaurant. 'Here, you can do whatever you want,' Mucerino says, demonstrably nonchalant with a glass of red wine in hand. 'Come up and talk to us. Come to Daniele and ask about the recipes, come to me and have some more pours. Really enjoy yourself, make yourself at home, because you are home.' At my table is the friend I invited, and on the other side, a recent graduate of UCLA, who heard about the dinner through someone they follow on Instagram. 'In my family restaurant, you come and sit wherever there is space,' Uditi says. 'I wanted to re-create that feeling where people who don't know each other put the phone away and spend some time talking to one another.' Le Le begins with three courses of bread. The first is the pomodoro, a thick, fluffy pan-pizza smeared with sugo di pomodoro, a rich red sauce with a deep tomato flavor that tastes like it's been reducing for hours. Each slice gets a dollop of milky buffalo mozzarella and a generous drizzle of olive oil. It's the bread Uditi used to sell by the kilo at the counter of his aunt's bakery. Next is a pillowy focaccia coated in a whipped prosciutto lardo made with the often-discarded fat trimmings. The meat butter melts into the warm bread under spoonfuls of sweet fig jam and shavings of Conciato Romano, widely referred to as the oldest variety of cheese in the world. The cheese is aged with wine and herbs, giving the sheep's milk cheese its unique, fierce aroma. Like Parmesan's older, more pungent cousin. The last focaccia is an homage to the sandwiches Uditi used to help his uncle sell under a bridge in Naples as a kid. 'It was my Sunday gig,' he says. 'We dipped the bread in fried lard leftover drippings, then smattered it with rapini and pecorino, wrapped it in foil and sold it like a burrito.' Uditi cooks Neapolitan rapini with Calabrian chiles, garlic and pecorino to create a mess of creamy, bitter greens he spoons over the hot focaccia. Mucerino's wine pairings are just as hyper-regional and the pours are generous. I was remiss to waste the remnants of my glass of Cantine di Marzo Greco di Tufo, a dry, citrusy white wine from Campania that was served alongside a salad of endive, sugar snap peas and tonnato meant to mimic Caesar dressing. Unless you're quick with your sips, leftover wine in your glass is dumped to make room for the next pairing, with each piece of focaccia and individual item on the menu receiving its own wine. The pasta portion of the meal begins with Uditi inviting diners to join him in the kitchen to break mezzanelli. 'In Italy, they say Italians don't break pasta, or when an Italian breaks pasta, an Italian goes to heaven or gets mad,' says Uditi. 'So guess what?' He takes a footlong piece of pasta and breaks it into four pieces. 'We are committing sins tonight!' With phones trained on the kitchen, guests put on pairs of black gloves and film themselves breaking the long tubes of pasta for the next course, a lardiata Uditi's family used to make for Sunday dinners. Lardo di colonnata gives the tomato sauce a meaty backbone and a velvety texture that clings to each broken piece of noodle. 'In this space, you appreciate Neapolitan cuisine with no compromises' Uditi says. 'The goal is to make people understand my culture.' Le Le is named for the nickname his mother and younger brother gave him as a child. Uditi's crowning glory is pasta e fagioli, a universally popular Italian dish that's part of the canon of cucina povera. It's a lumpy mass of broken fusilli, linguini, spaghetti, mafalda and ziti pasta, fused together with Peruano beans cooked until the starches leech and create a paste-like sauce. It's a dish Uditi made once a week at his family's Naples restaurant. For Le Le, the pasta e fagioli is served tableside from a colossal terracotta pot that is wheeled through the dining room. Each person receives a healthy portion with a drizzle of agile sofrito, or what Uditi likes to call Italian chili crisp. The texture switches from chewy to soft, creamy to crisp in every spoonful. It's a dish that delivers a warming sensation that envelops your entire body. While guests visit the kitchen frequently throughout the evening, there's a mad dash to capture the sizzle of rib-eye steaks emerging from the ovens. Uditi dresses the steaks in a demi-glace made from all the meat juice and trimmings and a little bit of Aglianico wine. It's an unabashed moment of pure carnal bliss unmatched by anything I've experienced at an actual steakhouse in the last year. Mucerino pairs the steak with his most prized wine of the evening, a bottle of Taurasi wrapped in a cloudy white webbing of marine life and debris. 'This bottle was aged under the water in the Adriatic Sea for nine years,' he says. 'The water speeds the aging process, the natural darkness, natural cold temperatures and the small vibration of the water changes the molecular structure of the wine.' The Taurasi is big and earthy enough for the steak, with enough acidity to help cut through the richness of the meat. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, but I tasted a salinity in the wine that I like to imagine came from the sea. For dessert, Uditi invites Ishnoelle Richardson into the kitchen. Richardson is the baker behind Baking With Ish, a small pastry counter at the Blossom Market food hall in San Gabriel. He's known for his pastries infused with Filipino flavors. Richardson's pistachio dessert is like a luxurious cake and a nut tart in a single, petite round pastry. The crust is fashioned from 80% Sonora wheat from the Tehachapi Grain Project and 20% almond flour. It's on the thicker side, at least half an inch, to form a sturdy base for the cake inside. The spongecake is soaked in Limoncello and surrounded by a white chocolate ganache with Italian pistachio paste with almonds, giving the cake a slight amaretto flavor. A dollop of whipped ricotta helps catch any stray bits of nut or crumble. By the time dessert arrives, my capacity for another bite is waning, but the tart disappears in a matter of minutes. Uditi makes his way around the dining room, checking in with each table and pausing to take photos. He sips from a glass of wine and sneaks a bite of pistachio tart. 'I don't want barriers, it's about conviviality and making memories,' he says. Dates for upcoming dinners are announced every two weeks, and Uditi plans to turn Le Le into a club of sorts, where people can sign up to be members. He also has his sights on opening a focacceria. Until then, your best bet at a reservation is to sign up for the waitlist.
