Go Undercover with a Cop in Naples
Follow novelist Gary Shteyngart on a mission to uncover the city’s best fried pizza, ribs and T-bones — and, of course, some donuts.
By Gary Shteyngart
Photographs by Micaiah Carter
Since I was a little kid weaned on various forms of sausage and The Godfather, my greatest passions have been food and tales of organized crime. I was born in Russia, a country that some regard as the apotheosis of a corrupt mafia state, and am also an unrepentant gourmand with heavy Italian leanings, a slave to oregano, basil, and mozzarella di bufala. So when a New York friend tells me that his cousin is a gastronomically obsessed undercover cop in Naples, I experience a mild heart attack of joy. After a few phone calls and with the help of Google Translate, “Tonino” (because he works undercover, I’ll call him by his nickname) agrees to take me on a personalized tour of his city, an unlikely combination of criminality, gastronomy, and history. If your idea of police life is an endless procession of Boston creams and bad coffee, then you clearly have not met the Italian version.
An hour after picking me up at the airport, Tonino and I are feasting on an appetizer of crisp, fried anchovies, followed by an entire spiny bottom-dwelling monster of a fish called gallinella di mare and a seafood-stuffed paccheri at a trattoria called O’Cerriglio, alongside a bottle of crisp Vesuvian Lacryma Christi. Compared to many Neapolitans, Tonino is an exceptionally tall, broad-shouldered man, with an intense gaze that easily gives way to laughter. Though he studied biology at the famed University of Naples, his father and brother worked for the carabinieri, so police work runs deep in his blood. At work he is issued a Beretta semiautomatic, but I learn that strapped to his belt, as it is most days, is his personal Smith & Wesson, a small, easily concealed piece. Neither my Italian nor his English is ready for prime time, so we cobble together a mutual language of our own. “The life is one and it is very short, and this is the pleasure of my life,” he manages, on the subject of the dishes arrayed before us. I nod, telling him that food, especially if it involves vast quantities of sugar and carbohydrates, is one of my greatest private (and public) joys.
Tonino’s undercover work takes place in Naples’s colorful, ancient centro storico, far from crime-ridden areas like Scampia, the bleak setting for Roberto Saviano’s hit book Gomorrah (now a Netflix series), a portmanteau of Gomorra and the Camorra, the crime syndicate that presides over Naples and the surrounding areas. (The origins of the Camorra are disputed, with some scholars dating its inception as far back as the 15th century. Compared to the Sicilian Mafia’s entrenched hierarchy, it is highly decentralized, consisting of family clans beefing over territory.)
But even when we venture far from the centro storico, Tonino is greeted with an overabundance of warmth: Glasses of Prosecco are presented, the best off-menu dishes are whipped up pronto, and at one point, in a pharmacy, of all places, we are handed a pair of surprisingly tasty zeppole, a sort of cream-puff pastry. On the other hand, everyone also busts his chops, because Tonino is something of a traitor to his people: He is a supporter of Juventus, the perpetually victorious Turinese soccer team, instead of the local favorite, Napoli. “I like a winner,” he says, unapologetically.
The street of Spaccanapoli, literally “the Naples splitter,” runs through the heart of the old town and is about as touristy as one can find in Naples. Yet even here, the Camorra has left its greasy footprint. After lunch, Tonino takes me half a block off the drag, into the courtyard off a small gray alley dominated by a shrine to a fallen Camorristo, or member of the Camorra. Emanuele Sibillo, a rising member of one of the two crime syndicate families that control vast parts of the centro storico, was only 19 when he was gunned down by a rival clan in 2015. Today the shrine features a somber portrait of the dark-eyed young man with a haircut Tonino describes as la cresta (named after mountain crests; essentially a Mohawk) and a thick beard favored by many young Camorristi. Well-wishers of the dead young man have left offerings such as bottles of 17 For Men cologne and an intricate symbol of 17, the symbol π (3 + 14 = 17), made out of fresh red roses, a tribute to his leadership of the ES17 clan. Down the street, someone has drawn a revolver with the words Sibillo Regna, or “Sibillo is king.”
As a former chronicler of the Russian mafia and a rabid Gomorrah fan, I know this sort of kitschy tribute well. I think of the tombstones to Russian Mafiosi adorned with Orthodox crosses and the Mercedes they drove before some guy named Oleg the Moose offed them on a street corner. A friend of mine in Palermo — a city that has known its share of Mafia violence — takes issue with what mafioso shows do to young people. “There are kids repeating lines from Gomorrah in the schools today,” he says. “Glamorizing it.” But just as the tourist and local sections of Naples are often indistinguishable, just as the modern city is built on the remains of the Roman and Greek cities, so the Camorra seems threaded through the fabric of this beautiful metropolis, its ethereal gastronomy and art sprinkled over a civilization in distress.
As we walk through the streets, Tonino notes, with a gesture here or there, the way only a meter can make a difference between what he calls “Napoli turistico” and “Napoli normale.” A street thronged with drunken Germans lets out into an alleyway of sullen local grandmas. Via Oronzio Costa, where Sibillo met his end, is definitely an example of the latter. Hand-washed gowns flutter out at street levels, and motorinos are parked in living rooms, much as horses were once stabled. Tonino explains that many of the Camorra’s groupings have devolved into little gangs the locals call paranza, or “schools of fish.” The recently released film on the phenomenon is called Piranhas: La Paranza dei Bambini and is based on Saviano’s novel by the same name; some of these gang members are still working on their first mustaches. The sad reality, I’ve been told by others, is that it can be easier to vanquish a centralized Mafia entity like the original Sicilian Mafia than a deeply decentralized one such as the present-day Camorra.
This being Naples, the murder site is but 525 feet away from one of the best bakeries in the city, Capriccio. The owners greet Tonino like a long-lost relative, and we are soon rewarded with several specimens of their most luxurious dessert, the baba. The pastry often presents itself as a small yeast cake, but this particular example is fluffed out to the size of a serious Bundt cake, soaked through with sugar water and rum, like a divine alcoholic sponge. While there is something queasy about visiting the site of a young man’s demise and then being taken to get a pastry — imagine doing the same in parts of West Baltimore or any of the world’s difficult neighborhoods — the reality of the city is that the tragic and sublime not only rub shoulders but at times feel like they belong to the same body. I am reminded of my hometown, St. Petersburg, Russia, in the 1990s, when the bloody streets reflected the glint of neoclassical palaces beneath the tread of the city’s brilliant but besieged citizenry.
That night Tonino has to attend to family matters, but he leaves me with one gastronomical hint: pasta e patate con provola e pancetta. And so, as the sun sets over the Bay of Naples, I Google the dish, hoping to find a restaurant that serves a fine example, and end up heading to the tiny lanes of Quartieri Spagnoli, the still-colorful working-class area in the heart of the city, to a restaurant called Da Nennella (later, Tonino will approve of my choice). The place is scruffy and crowded to the gills. I sit next to a basket of bananas as a waiter sings fatly of love, and then, without warning, everyone breaks into a round of applause for the chef. Tonino will later tell me the owner likes to insult Italian tourists in the impenetrable Neapolitan dialect, including the scatological insult strunz, which I remember from my childhood days on the streets of Queens. I do not get ribbed by the owner or the frazzled, singing waitstaff, but I can tell you that the combination of creamy provola, tangy, smoky pancetta, and potatoes in Tonino’s beloved dish is gooey, comforting, and sublime, even better with the cold red wine I drain from a red plastic cup.
Outside, the tiny street is taken over by a mob of singing, dancing, kissing young people, all drunk off the wares of a bar called Cammarota Spritz, a hole-in-the-wall that offers the eponymous drink for a ridiculous €1 a cup. A woman slaps her boyfriend so hard I think it’s a gunshot. A bottle of champagne is opened. The cork nearly misses my eye. I stumble home amidst the still partying city, lost in a maze of flickering lights, guided by a bevy of household saints staring at me from darkened windows. There’s so much unquenchable life in this city, I think, a life lived out in the piazzas and tiny alleys, that the city of New York — its acres of Duane Reades and Chase Banks and endless, demented pursuit of money — seems sterile. What a difference a €1 cup of spritz can make.
The next day, Tonino takes me to his office in Naples’s main questura, or police station, a stately marble building of the Mussolini era. There’s a generous view of Mount Vesuvius brooding in the distance. Tonino can’t reveal much about the operations procedures of the unit he works for, but a great deal of his work involves electronic surveillance. (Later I will introduce him to The Wire, and he will compare it favorably to Gomorrah, which, he says, “sometimes exaggerates.”) Unlike their bearded, Mohawked prey, the men of Tonino’s squad look like a band of clean-cut intellectuals. There’s a sense of camaraderie, some back-slapping and shit talk, and I am offered not one but two versions of zeppole in honor of the feast of San Giuseppe.
Given the scale of the problem, the inspectors of the Squadra Mobile work hard, putting in long hours and short weekends. Tonino and others I’ve met report that the police are winning against the Camorra, with hundreds of arrests, including Camorristi at the very top. Saviano portrays a different reality, one of constant, unending war. (In fact, unlike Netflix’s Narcos or The Wire, the first two seasons of the show Gomorrah barely featured the police.) One of the Camorra’s revenue streams is the pizzo,an extortion racket in which a local gang member approaches a shop owner and says, as Tonino puts it, “Your security needs to be beefed up.” Failure to pay leads to a profound lack of security, a hail of bullets directed at the storefront, or in the case of Pizzeria Sorbillo, a nighttime bomb that exploded inside in January, injuring nobody.
Before I fly out, Tonino recommends I visit for a pie and to get a sense of how Neopolitans soldier on. “Closed by bombing. We are reopening soon,” a sign hanging atop the pizza shop proclaims in Italian. “Viva Napoli.” The pizza is studded with buffalo mozzarella from a dairy cooperative named after a local pastor assassinated by the Camorra for his “anti-Mafia efforts.” I sit across from a row of thoughtful, appropriately bearded Italian men chewing their anti-Mafia pizza.
Lest one think that Naples is a cesspool of violence, Tonino tells me that only 21 murders were committed in Naples last year. (He estimates that 80 percent of them were Camorra-related.) When I ask him why the number is so low, he says, “Because it’s very hard to get guns.” Naples is one of those cities besieged by its own history that nonetheless perseveres with style and grace. A beloved pizzeria is bombed, a beloved pizzeria reopens. Do you think a pizzaiolo can ever back down from his craft? There are many versions of Naples, of which the Gomorrah version is only the loudest and most infuriating. When I close my eyes, I think of children dashing around on electric bikes, of the crunch of fried anchovies accompanied by the mineral tang of local white wine, of a sleepy deliveryman crossing a street, his T-shirt reading ROCK STAR AT WORK. Viva Napoli, indeed.
Want to Eat Like a Neapolitan Cop?
These four dishes—including a rum-filled, donut-like dream—are worth making part of your itinerary.
Masardona
Pizza is great, but is it any match for fried pizza? Masardona, in the working-class neighborhood by the central train station, is run by jovial neighborhood legend Enzo Piccirillo. His fried pizza with smoky bits of cicoli (pressed cakes of fatty pork), sweet ricotta, and provola cheese is classic, but also try the Zia Tatina, a mind-bending blend of escarole, pine nuts, raisins, olives, smoked provola, and peppers.
Braceria Bifulco
One of Tonino’s favorite spots, Bifulco, is an airy temple to meat in the town of Ottaviano. For carnivores, this may qualify for Last Meal status. The ribs and T-bones are outstanding, and don’t miss the Carpaccio Belladonna e Tartare del Vesuvio, a shockingly delicious blend of raw beef, pomodoro sauce, basil, and stracciatella di bufala.
Starita
Okay, this isn’t exactly a discovery, and I’ve been coming here on past visits to Naples, but the garlic-infused marinara pie at this pizzeria is definitely Tonino-approved, and I believe it qualifies as one of the best non-fried pizzas in the city.
Capriccio
I don’t want to give in to stereotypes, but yes, some cops do like sweet pastries. Forget the shameful American donut and have this insane alcohol-delivery contraption (rum is a major ingredient) known as the baba at this family-run temple to all things sugar.
About the author: Gary Shteyngart is the author of the novel Lake Success, recently out in paperback. He has also written the novels Super Sad True Love Story, Absurdistan, and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook as well as the memoir Little Failure.
