How do people eat pizza in Naples? Any way they like, it seems
In the Italian birthplace of pizza, people’s attitudes on how the popular dish should be eaten are quite simple: they just don’t really care
With the opening of some prominent new Italian eateries in Hong Kong, pizza has again returned to the fore.
Of course, it never went out of fashion. In polls, it is still regarded as one of the world’s most popular foods. It is easy to eat, easy to make, and easy to adapt and reinvent with endless topping possibilities.
However, traditionalists like to claim its original Neapolitan form as the best and most authentic pizza.
Recently, I made a pilgrimage to Naples, the historic capital of southern Italy’s Campania region. Like many devotees, I expected to be enlightened in the definitive ways and means of pizza theology – the correct toppings to order, the right way to eat it, and other tenets to follow from the keepers of the faith.
Over four days in the San Ferdinando neighbourhood, I devoured three pizzas and a calzone, and studiously observed Neapolitans and their eating habits. What I concluded might be heresy to some, but it seems that most Italians do not really care how anybody else eats pizza.
People ate it with knife and fork, others folded the pie, they had it takeaway, and many ordered eclectic toppings beyond the margherita. In busy districts, outlets sold it by the slice and workers enjoyed it as a quick snack. In short, there seemed to be no fundamental orthodoxy to the pizza experience.