Pizza and the Long Lunch

Chiara closed the lab for the long Italian lunch at one o'clock. "Come with me," she said.

Polly perched on her shoulder. Chiara walked out into the bright noon of the park and turned uphill.

Naples at lunch was a different city. Shutters were rolling up. Espresso bars were filling. The morning smell of salt and pine had turned to garlic and tomato cooked over a high flame.

Chiara took her to a small pizzeria on a side street. Inside, three men were working at a wood-burning oven that filled the back wall. The fire was hot enough to feel from the door.

A pizza in Naples is not what most of the world calls pizza. It is a Neapolitan pizza. The city has guarded the rules for it for two hundred years. The dough is flour, water, salt, and yeast, and nothing else. The tomatoes are San Marzano, grown in volcanic soil on the slopes of Vesuvius. The cheese is fresh that morning. The basil is raw, added at the end. The oven runs at 485 degrees Celsius. The pizza cooks for ninety seconds.

The pizzaiolo slid a margherita pizza into the oven. Ninety seconds later he pulled it out. The crust had blistered into dark leopard spots. The cheese had melted into pale pools.

Chiara handed Polly a small piece of crust. It was salty and charred and almost weightless. Polly understood why the city had spent two centuries protecting this thing.

"There is a theory," Chiara said, "that octopuses are smart because they are short-lived. They have to learn fast. We are smart because we are long-lived. We can afford to learn slowly. Pasta will learn everything she knows in two more years. I will still be learning when I die."

They walked back slowly. The afternoon was warm.