Da Michele’s Margherita Pizza

I had two main reasons for wanting to travel to Naples – Posillippo and pizza! 

I had read about a few restaurants that were more popular for pizza, but seeing as how Naples is considered the home of pizza, people told me that regardless of where I go, the pizza would be delicious. 

My B&B was just 5 minutes from Da Michele’s, one of the more famous pizza places in Naples, due to its appearance in Eat, Pray, Love, and the fabulous reviews most people seem to give about this place.  There was a long line of people hovering both inside and outside the main entrance when I arrived, which was not surprising as I had known about the popularity of this restaurant.  I finally made my way inside and noticed that many people had little pieces of paper with a number on it.  I saw a man sitting at the till right near the entrance and I asked him for a number.  He pointed me towards one of the wait staff at the back, near the kitchen, so I decided to wait patiently by the entrance and hoped he would make his way towards the crowd of people that was slowly forming at the entrance.    

It was such a confusing system and contributed to one of my major frustrations of Italian inefficiency.  I’m not sure why the man sitting at the till couldn’t hand out numbers.  Perhaps it was because he didn’t speak English, but I’d imagine that it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to figure out how many people there are in your party and provide you with a ticket. The waiter would only come around once in a while to hand out new numbers, so by the time he came back to do that, there was quite a gathering at the entrance. And the entrance is not a big open space.  It was crowded and people were standing right next to tables where patrons were eating, which I’m sure wasn’t too fun for those that were trying to eat.

We were told that the average wait time was an hour, but I was fortunate enough to be able to sit down after about 10-15 minutes.  There are only two choices on the menu – their specialty margherita pizza (consisting of tomato sauce, basil and buffalo mozzarella), and the lesser known marinara pizza (with tomato sauce, garlic, and oregano).  As Naples is known to have invented margherita pizza, I ordered this one to try.

They offered two sizes for each of their pizzas – regular and large.  The regular was already so big that it was spilling over the plate.  I took a look around to see what the large would look like, but it seemed like everyone knew that the regular would be more than enough, as I couldn’t find a single order of the large pizza. 

The pizza was exactly as I had expected.  The dough was slightly burnt, but very chewy, and the abundance of cheese made the pizza very enjoyable. This was also the most economical meal in my entire 2 week trip.  For a measly €4, you received more food than you could finish.  It’s no wonder that there’s always a line up at this place.

Da Michele
Address: Viale Colli Aminei, 183 Napoli, Italy
Telephone: +39 081 741 1891