Better to die full than to live fasting. So say the Neapolitans. I, who know them well, as their adopted daughter for more than fifteen years, I know that they have taken this proverb very seriously.
There is no hole in Naples where there is not someone to sell you something to eat, from the smallest nucella to the pizza that overflows off the side of the plate, from the super-restricted coffee to the casatiello that weighs as much as a two-year-old. The fact is that such a city cannot be explained. Naples is taken or left, as well as its inhabitants, worker ants always in a hurry, with their heads full of whirling ideas.
There is genius in their irreverent joviality, in that Neapolitan attitude to create and solve problems. All this passion finds its best expression in food and precisely in order not to live fast, literally or otherwise, food perfectly reflects the nature of those who create it.
It would be easy to talk about pizza, yet, in this case, the emphasis is on another type of offer, another way of living and enjoying the culinary tradition of Naples. I want food that makes my hands dirty and I want to eat it like the real pros, on the street and on my feet, maybe even without a handkerchief.
So what do you do? You go for kiosks, shacks, chalets, traveling carts and so on and so forth and, with these premises, the first place to be explored is certainly the seafront of Mergellina. People always go to Mergellina: in summer, in winter, when it rains, when it is hot, especially when it is hot. Neapolitan cuisine is rich in recovered recipes and that of tarallo is not excluded: derived from the leftovers of bread dough, because nothing could be thrown away, pepper and a little lard were added to it, tasty ingredients that cost little.
