L'Oro Di Napoli, Brislington: 'Rumour has it Stanley Tucci is already planning a trip'
A new pizza has entered the chat
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The four days I spent in Naples 2022 were spent meandering through dense cobbled streets, dodging vespas and crowds of tourists blindly following flagged guides, all in search of the next thing to eat. The first port of call after landing was famed L’Antica for a margherita and a beer, eaten on some sun-drenched steps around the corner from the babbling masses. Then there was fried seafood hawked on the side of the street in a brown paper cone; startlingly hot, just-crisp and as fresh as it gets; never having seen the inside of a fridge or freezer. There were rounds of bulbous arancini — some better than others. Pasta, of course, in bowls, but also I wasn’t going to turn down the option to try a slice of the frittata di spaghetti being offered over a counter to hungry passers-by. And then there was pizza fritta.
It was Stanley Tucci who introduced me to fried pizza. Not personally, sadly, but via his TV show Searching for Italy. Before that, my only impression of fried pizza was much more likely to resemble a hulking triangle of batter and regret that you’d find in a Scottish chippy, where almost anything is fair game as long as it will fit in an industrial deep-fat frier. And most things will. But the half moon creation I devoured in Naples, at the much-garlanded Sorbillo, was gravity-defying — if I’d let it go I’m sure it would have floated up into the sky like a helium balloon escaping the grips of a distracted toddler. Biting through the crisp carapace revealed barely cooked tomatoes, milky mozzarella and pungent basil; which had only had the briefest time to familiarise themselves with each other during the minute or so the fritta had spent in the fryer. It was one of those food moments I’ll never forget — it was exceptional.
I was told, however, by the Neapolitan couple that run L’Oro Di Napoli in Brislington, that Sorbillo’s pizza fritta is not nearly the best in their home city. We’d been lured out to this unprepossessing roadside joint with its brightly-illuminated sign depicting, presumably, a stylised Vesuvius behind the name, on yet another wet, wintry day with a somewhat disobedient dog in tow, by pictures on Instagram. Seemingly how all custom for restaurants is earned these days. These images showed thick, blistered Neapolitan crusts emerging from an oven hitherto unknown to The Bristol Sauce — a visit became inevitable.
I didn’t actually know until we arrived that L’Oro Di Napoli also serve pizza fritta. On the menu you’ll also find a wurstel (£14.30), which is pizza with slices of German sausage and fries on top. We ordered both, an arancino to start and a negroni.
If everything were riding on the negroni (£9.50), I’d have evacuated after the first sip. A negroni is the safe shelter in a turbulent and risky cocktail list; it is very hard to fuck up something that only requires equal measures of three ingredients. Hard, but not impossible: helped considerably by swapping the vermouth for soda water. Do not try this at home. The result is a sort of negroni-squash, a watered-down drink that satisfies nothing and somehow still costs the best part of a tenner. In fairness to my new Neapolitan friends, they had written the ingredients out on the menu, I had just failed to read it. And, in my defence, ‘negroni’ should really only mean one thing.
Fortunately it was uphill from there on in. Arancini should be crisp on the outside, revealing a molten centre of soft risotto and oozing cheese within. This one (£8), stuffed also with ragu, nailed the brief and only fell a little short on seasoning.
I have a lot of time for potato on pizza. Double carbs = double the fun, and one only needs to look to Bertha’s umami bomb for further justification. But chips on a pizza? That is a new one, even for me. But apparently it’s everywhere in Naples, and sausage and chips on a pizza is commonly fed to children. They only told me that after I’d ordered it, and possibly explains why they removed a third of the alcohol from my cocktail.
Had I eaten this aged 10, I think I would’ve filed it immediately under ‘greatest meals ever’. As an adult, however, I’m less convinced. The dough suggests that other pizzas would absolutely be worth returning for; it had clearly been crafted by expert hands. The chips, in fairness, were crisp and well seasoned, but I’m not a fan of hot dog sausages really and putting them on a pizza does nothing for me. All in all, I think I can chalk this up to a case of bad ordering, which this time is entirely on me. The only time I can really imagine wanting my pizza topped with a mountain of chips is when I’ve had a few too many weak negronis and need something to soak it up.
The pizza fritta, here filled with mozzarella, ricotta, salami and tomatoes (£16.50) was intensely creamy — I could only manage a couple of mouthfuls before it became too rich. This relative of the fritta I was so enamoured by in Naples was tasty, though more of a distant cousin to its Italian forebear rather than an identical twin. It needed longer in the fryer to achieve the crunch I was yearning for, and it is my opinion that, on this particular - very rare - occasion, one cheese is enough.
Not to be defeated by too much cream, we finished with a forgettable tiramisu which was lacking a boozy punch, much like the negroni. Despite the food being far from perfect, it is clear that I could have ordered and that L’Oro Di Napoli, like a young Diego Maradona (a portrait of whom is framed on the wall), has potential by the bucket full, not least because of the innate affability of the staff.
Brislington is a world away from Napoli, and I can only imagine how much the couple that run L’Oro must miss their home. It would be nigh-on impossible to recreate those narrow, cobbled streets with their vespas and street vendors in South Bristol — just imagine the Bristol City Council planning application process — but these two have succeeded in bringing proper Italian generosity, hospitality and some damn fine dough to the area. Rumour has it Stanley Tucci is already planning a trip.
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
L’Oro Di Napoli, 3 Birchwood Rd, Brislington, BS4 4QH
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