Pizzeria da Michele: Sorrento's Namesake of the Famous Naples Pizzeria

The world really knows only one pizzeria called da Michele: the one in Naples, where Julia Roberts ordered a margherita in Eat Pray Love and whose name has since grown into a chain of more than seventy branches from London to Tokyo. You won't find Sorrento on its official list. And yet there's a sign on Via Fuori Mura here that reads Pizzeria da Michele.

Pizzeria da Michele in Sorrento is a small pizzeria and rosticceria - an oven, a counter, delivery and a few plastic tables out front - one of thousands that keep Italian cuisine alive beyond the reach of the guidebooks, and nothing but the name connects it to its famous Naples namesake.

The Michele Who Never Had to Go to Court Over the Name

Da Michele means "at Michele's", and Michele is a first name about as ordinary in southern Italy as John is back home in Czechia. No Condurro from the Neapolitan pizza dynasty runs the Sorrento place: the business belongs to Michele Sorrentino - a man born with the perfect first name and surname for running a pizzeria in Sorrento. And he isn't the only one to put his own name over the door with no link to Naples whatsoever: there's an independent pizzeria da Michele in Massa Lubrense, at the other end of the peninsula.

The famous name was born in Naples in 1870, when Salvatore Condurro opened his pizzeria; it was named after his son Michele, and in the Forcella district it still serves just two things - margherita and marinara, nothing else. The name da Michele has been through an actual court battle - one fought inside the Condurro family itself: a Naples court eventually awarded the right to use the name to the historic branch and its official chain alone, and the other relatives had to strip it from their facades and their domain names. Sorrento's Michele could watch the whole dispute with the calm of a man who needs nothing more than his own first name.

The Pizzeria Outside the Walls

Via Fuori Mura literally means "outside the walls", and that's exactly the impression the place makes - I came away from my visit thinking it sat well out of the center. But the walls it once had at its back are long gone: from the oven it's only a few steps to Piazza Tasso, the main square of Sorrento - the evening crowds just don't come this way, so the people at the counter tend to be locals picking up a box to go rather than tourists with a map. Delivery, as it happens, covers the whole Sorrento Peninsula.

Pizza itself reached Sorrento from Naples, twenty-five kilometers away across the bay, with pizzaioli trained at its ovens; over time the locals added a version of their own, pizza sorrentina, with a flatter rim and fiordilatte mozzarella from the peninsula. The menu at da Michele is the exact opposite of Neapolitan purism: alongside pizzas with toppings that would never make it through the door in Forcella, it offers chicken, pasta and fried bites from the rosticceria. If you want to see the oven at work, you order at the counter - the whole operation runs right in front of you.

Seven Euros at a Plastic Table

I ordered a pizza with sausage, eggplant and basil at the counter (see Where to Eat in Sorrento), and the wait was a show in itself: the staff slid one pizza after another into the oven at the pace of a well-oiled machine - dough, oven, box, next. I ate outside at a plastic table, with mostly locals sitting around me. The pizza cost 7 EUR and it was fantastic: the crust thin and baked to dark blisters, the eggplant soft and soaked with oil, the sausage salty enough to call for that basil leaf on its own. When we went back inside to say how good it had been, the staff were genuinely delighted - a tourist who strays outside the walls isn't a common sight here. I don't think I've ever made anyone that happy for seven euros.

Dan Špaňhel

I'm Dan. I only write about what I've tasted myself - from street food stalls to Michelin stars. I've travelled half the world for food and tried everything possible - even the impossible.

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