Naples · Food

The old street market running off Via Toledo at Montesanto: fish on ice, vegetables, cheese counters, and rosticcerie selling hot food to take away. It is a working market, so it is busiest and best before lunch and largely shut by mid-afternoon. Metro Line 2 or the Montesanto funicular station.

North of the old centre and downhill from Capodimonte, and the neighbourhood most worth eating in rather than just passing through — pizzerias, tripe stalls, bakeries and pastry shops on Via dei Vergini and around Piazza Sanità. Walk down through Porta San Gennaro rather than up from the station side.

The 19th-century café on Piazza Trieste e Trento by the Teatro San Carlo, and the easiest place to try a sfogliatella riccia and a babà without hunting. Prices at the counter are a fraction of those at the tables outside, which is the standard Italian arrangement and worth knowing before you sit down.

Fried food in a paper cone — battered anchovies, courgette flowers, panzarotti potato croquettes, sometimes squid — sold from friggitorie across the old city and the Pignasecca for a few euro. It is the Neapolitan street meal that is not pizza, and it is eaten walking. Buy where the fryer is visibly turning over.