Traditional Neapolitan seafood dishes: what to eat in Naples

The traditional Neapolitan seafood dishes worth trying at least once are spaghetti with clams, impepata di cozze, fried anchovies, octopus salad, fried squid and prawns, and salt cod. They are simple recipes that depend almost entirely on the freshness of the fish. At Trattoria del Golfo, at Via Santa Brigida 56 in Naples, you will find them on the menu alongside the catch of the day.

Here is what to eat in Naples when you are in the mood for seafood, dish by dish, with the story behind each one and a link to it on our menu.

Seafood starters: from the fry shop to the scarpetta

In Naples a seafood meal often begins with something fried, or with a dish placed in the middle of the table to share.

• Fried anchovies from Pozzuoli. Anchovies are the bay's oily fish par excellence, and Pozzuoli has one of the oldest fish markets in the area. Lightly floured, fried in oil and served with lemon, they are eaten with your fingers: one of the city's classic street foods.
• Zeppole with seaweed. Fritters of risen, that is leavened, dough with seaweed: they are part of the Neapolitan festive fry-up and also turn up in cuoppi, the paper cones you eat as you stroll.
• Fried baby squid, small, floured and served with lemon.
• Impepata di cozze. Mussels opened over a fierce heat with black pepper and lemon. It is the simpler sister of the mussel soup Neapolitans make on Maundy Thursday, a custom linked to the Holy Week fast. The juices left in the bottom of the dish are mopped up with bread: in Naples this is called «fare la scarpetta».
• Octopus salad. Octopus poached and dressed with olive oil, lemon, parsley and garlic. Neapolitans say «'O purpo se coce dint'a ll'acqua soja»: the octopus cooks in its own water, and sometimes people too are best left to stew in their own juice, with patience.
• Seafood sauté: mussels, clams, shrimps, king prawns and more of the day's catch, tossed in the pan.
• Trio of marinated fish: anchovies, salmon and whitebait marinated in oil and vinegar.

To taste a little of everything there is the seafood antipasto, a selection of raw and cooked fish starters depending on the day's catch.

Neapolitan seafood pasta

Among Neapolitan seafood pasta dishes, three tell the story of the tradition particularly well.

• Spaghetti with clams. Clams, garlic, olive oil and parsley: in Naples they are never missing from the Christmas Eve table. In leaner times people also made «spaghetti a vongole fujute», spaghetti with clams that had «run away»: the same dressing, but without the clams. We have written about it in Spaghetti with clams, a Neapolitan passion.
• Scialatielli with seafood. Scialatielli are a fresh pasta born on the Amalfi Coast in the twentieth century; the name is linked to the Neapolitan «scialare», to enjoy life. We serve them with mussels, clams and the catch of the day.
• Pasta and beans with seafood. «Pasta mista», mixed pasta, comes from the habit of collecting leftover shapes in a bag, and in Naples it is still sold that way. With beans and shellfish it becomes a proper home-cooked dish. The same mixed pasta stars in another classic, pasta e patate.

Main courses: fried, grilled and the catch of the day

After the pasta, fish is eaten fried, grilled over embers or cooked whole.

• Fried prawns and squid, floured and fried.
• Grilled octopus and grilled squid, for those who want the taste of the sea without the frying. Octopus also comes fried.
• Salt cod Sicilian style, cooked with tomato, olives and capers. Baccalà is the Christmas Eve fish in Naples, together with eel.
• Sea bass in a salt crust, the whole fish cooked in salt.
• Mixed grilled fish: fish, crustaceans and molluscs on the grill.
• Catch of the day: the fish that came in that morning, cooked the way you like it.

Raw seafood

Alongside the traditional cooking, the menu has a crudité section: oysters opened to order, raw langoustines and prawns, and tuna and salmon tartare, made with blast-chilled fish.

Where to eat traditional seafood in the centre of Naples

Trattoria del Golfo is a family trattoria: Enzo and his wife come from the Quartieri Spagnoli, their son Antimo, who grew up at the stove with his grandmother, runs the kitchen, and his sister Raffaella works beside him. The fish arrives every morning and the kitchen decides the day's dishes according to what the market offers: that is why the menu changes with the sea.

We are at Via Santa Brigida 56, on the corner of Via Verdi, 80133 Naples, a few minutes' walk from the Teatro San Carlo and the Galleria Umberto I: you will find walking directions in Where to eat near the Teatro San Carlo. Every dish on the menu lists its allergens and its story; to choose the right wine there is our guide to Campanian wines to drink with fish and the wine list.

For bookings and up-to-date opening hours, see our Contact page.