Street food of Naples: discovering non-traditional snacks

For sure the Neapolitan kitchen is famous all over the world. Everyone knows about pizza, spaghetti or seafood, but the creativity of Neapolitans always lead to innovations in this sector. There are and will always be some new dishes to try. In this article I’d like to talk about the new street food you should try in Naples. 

Ragù is a traditional Neapolitan meat and tomato sauce that has a wonderful home-made taste. That’s why most of the time the best ragù chefs are the Neapolitan grandmothers. The secret of a good ragù is to cook this sauce for hours and hours on a small flame.

So, it’s not a news that a Neapolitan granny will get up at 4 in the morning to start cooking ragù that will only be ready for lunch. Now, you don’t need to find a Neapolitan grandmother to make you the perfect ragù sauce. There are some new places in Naples where you can eat ragù as a takeaway. And the best thing about it is that you can eat it in any way that you like: in a sandwich, with pasta or just with the bread as a scarpetta.

Literally, translated from Italian, “Scarpetta” means a small shoe. It’s when you’re at home eating something super tasty, the dish is over, but you still have that extra sauce left on your plate. What do you do? You take a piece of bread, pick up the sauce with it and then eat it. Right? So, Neapolitans have a term for it “scarpetta”. Yup, there are some places in town where you can eat a whole plate of ragù sauce with bread.

America is famous mainly for its famous burgers, cheeseburgers and the other burgers. But in recent years even a thing like the hamburger so far from the Neapolitan kitchen is well integrated in the Neapolitan street food.

A fusion between two completely different kitchens, but the results obtained in the city of Naples are really good, this is not the only example of a cross between the two cultures.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is a new street food star in town! Probably some of you already know about the Neapolitan toast. And for the ones who don’t know yet, you should definitely try this super tasty toast made out of the fresh Campania region ingredients. 

Definitely at a place called “Capatoast”, where products are famous for their great quality. The name Capatoast is a funny quibble having two meanings: “capa” in the Neapolitan dialect means – head; and toast is obviously a toast, right? Not exactly. There is a Neapolitan expression “capa tosta” (literally a hard head) which means stubborn. So if a person is called a capa tosta, that means he’s stubborn. You can interpret that even the most stubborn taste here will find a toast that will simply make fall in love with.

Freshly baked bread will suit every taste, who likes white, whole wheat, vegan with nuts or even sweet bread. Slices are bigger than the usual toasts (we’re in Naples, so a big portion is a must). And the ingredients selected have the freshest quality. Here you will find not only typical Campania region ingredients, but also some products that come from other Italian cities. A huge variety of toasts will satisfy even the pickiest ones.

So, if you love to eat and try some new tastes just you should definitely try the Neapolitan toast! Buon appetito and see you at the Capatoast!