Sorbillo

Naples, IT

Sorbillo is also another highly revered pizza place in Naples with a huge following. We debated whether to dine at Sorbillo, which was about a five minute walk away or at La Stanza del Gusto next to our hotel Piazza Bellini. We initially walked to Sorbillo to see how busy it was. Well, it was crazy busy. 30 plus people were waiting outside. I walked in to give my name for the waiting list, but my name was lost in Italian translation. That made waiting for us to be called a challenge. We ended up walking back to La Stanza del Gusto, but they only have a wine bar on Mondays, no dinner. Well, then we didn't having much of a choice, so we went back to Sorbillo and somehow figured out we were up.

Arancini

The menu is quite overwhelming with over 20 different types of pizza to choose from. We took some time trying to figure it out, and started with two arancini, fried risotto balls. Truth be told, they weren't that great. Sort of a disappointment for us. 

Sausage and Broccolini

We got greedy and picked two different heavily loaded topping pizzas. The first one was the sausage and broccolini pizza. The sausage was pretty standard flavored, nothing special but the brococcolini was tasty. The crust however wasn't as light and chewy as the pizza at Di Matteo and it was also a little too heavy on cheese. The pizza itself was huge in size, well enough to fill a single person. Overall, a good solid pizza, but not particularly amazing. 

Mushroom, Ham, Basil

The second pizza was even heavier that the first, mainly because the cheese. It wasn't mozzarella but a chunky, ricotta like cheese. It was thick, chalky and rich. Combined with the mushrooms and salty ham, it was just too much.  Plus, both of these pizza were extremely filling. But throughout the meal, we noticed that everyone got at least one Margherita. I experienced buyers remorse and it made me want just one bite of the classic Neapolitan pie. Since it was only 4 euros, we got one to go, with a very strange look from our server.

Margherita

Even though it was only a five minute walk back to our hotel, I didn't want the pizza to get cold. We raced back to our balcony and immediately dug in. The margherita was better than our previous in the restaurant, but none of the three met up to the quality and taste of our lunch at Di Matteo. 

All in all, I was glad we waited for the table and tried Sorbillo just to experience another well loved Naples pizza joint. The outcome wasn't as great as we'd hope but still had lots of fun and left with a full bellies without lightening the wallet.

Overall 6.5/10

May 24, 2011