Neapolitan pizza is a protected category — the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana certifies pizzerias that meet the strict rules on dough, ingredients, and wood-burning ovens. The result, when done right, is something unlike what passes for pizza most elsewhere: a thin, soft, slightly charred disc with a puffy cornicione edge, eaten immediately, in the restaurant, with your hands if you like.
Beyond pizza, the streets of the Centro Storico offer one of the great street food traditions in Italy. Fried pizza (pizza fritta) is the working-class original — a pocket of dough filled with ricotta and fried in boiling oil — sold from street-corner shops. Cuoppo: a paper cone of fried seafood or vegetables. Sfogliatelle: flaky pastry shells filled with sweetened ricotta, baked or fried, best warm. Babà: rum-soaked sponge cake. Follow your nose, watch where locals are queuing, and eat standing up.