Sunday, 2 June, was also the Festa della Repubblica, so we knew some things would be closed. But it's a smallish holiday at the start of the busy tourist season, so greed was on our side. Our goal was to explore an unexplored part of Pompeii, and then drive from Pompeii to Sorrento by way of some important foodie sites.
We'd spend a lot of time exploring the excavated city of Pompeii on an earlier trip, but since then we had learned that there are some satellite excavations as well, one of them reputed to be the home of Poppea, second wife of that great and magnanimous leader Nero, and star of the wickedly salacious opera L'Incoronazione di Poppea.
This was written by the genius Claudio Monteverdi, who nearly invented opera as an art form with L'Orfeo in 1607, and over 400 years later those two are still regularly performed in the great opera houses. Poppea was a fascinating subject, said to be not a very nice lady as she navigated the halls and chambers of Rome to secure her son's future in those wildly uncertain times.
Of course everyone needs a break from the city, so she had a summer villa with a view of the bay and its back to Vesuvius. It must have been gorgeous! And it was well designed for entertaining, The artwork is colorful even after two millennia (see top photo) and it was decorated with a number of fine Greek-style statuary works that were sexually charged, like this one of Hermaphroditus scorning a horny satyr. We saw the dining hall, the grand pool, the servants quarters, and an astonishing collection of mosaic and frescoed decoration of exquisite fineness and detail. Lucky for us, the Villa Poppaea is FREE on first Sundays. We stayed long, but we had other adventures to attend to.
After Poppea's house of pleasures, we took a short drive into Gragnano for Pastificio Somma. There were many Pastifici to see, but I had read about Pasta Somma as the "old-school" guy who would know the lore that we crave, and he was that and more.
This an excellent visit. Owner Saturno Somma gave us a long tour. The next time you look for top-quality dried pasta, look for the IGP-protected pasta di Gragnano. Gragnano produces the best dried pasta in Italy, and in a small town crowded with pasta makers, Pasta Somma is a special treasure - Saturno is fanatic about honoring the best of the old ways and, in addition to producing pasta of unsurpassed quality, he maintains a little pasta museum in his tiny factory with physical examples of the ancient water-works and other tools, and also samples of pasta made by his own and by the many inferior methods that strive to add the "Pasta di Gragnano IGP" to their product packaging.
He showed me every step of the process, starting with the history that made Naples a major port for resupplying ships with a storable staple that could be cooked in saltwater, thanks to the efforts of the "Lasagna King", Ferdinand II of Bourbon, King of the Two Sicilies, who standardized pasta production with regulation, organization, and marketing. In the 1840s he declared Gragnano pasta to be the standard. Unlike the fresh egg-pasta of the north, the Neapolitan dried pasta could go to sea and still be nourishing after two years away from land. Soon ships of the seven seas were resupplying in Naples and his wealth - and Gragnano's fame - were assured.
Not satisfied with ensuring the nutrition of starving seamen, Ferdinand II also decided to make pasta a part of courtly cuisine, but how to do that with the two-tined meat-spearing forks of the day? He invented the 4-tine fork that made it easy to dine on pasta and meat at the same meal - the success of Napoli as the pasta capital of the world was assured!
Is Pasta di Gragnano so special? What make it so? Yes it is, and Saturno explained every bit of it to your intrepid reporter. He showed me the old way, the "best way" that he honors, and the modern way that cuts some corners that Re Lasagne could not have foreseen to forbid. The grain, how it's milled, and the water are of crucial importance, and the local resources are best. Once the paste is made, it's extruded through bronze dies, which give the pasta a surface roughness that retains the sauce. In the photo above this one, compare the rough white Somma fusilli on the left with the shiny polished-looking commercial penne on the right. When you see that dried pasta was made with bronze dies, that's an indication of a quality artisanal product.
The next step is careful slow controlled drying. Drying too fast can lead to a short shelf life, a real stopper for ships at sea! Drying too slow can lead to the pasta spoiling before it's ready. Saturno showed me his racks (photo here) and explained the many factors to consider - it left my head spinning! For instance, the racks are in a temperature and humidity controlled chamber, and the humidity from the drying pasta is exhausted through fans that might be totally computerized (for what that's worth) at the Garofalo factory, but Saturno can check it himself every day!
Garofalo pasta is a very fine product, and you can get it at Market Basket in Massachusetts. It's certainly far superior to the North End's own Prince spaghetti, regardless of young Anthony's appetite and winged heels. I encourage you to try it.
If you want the true artisanal pasta experience of the Lasagna King, you can order direct from Pasta Somma, but he has a 10 kg minimum (20 packages), and shipping is expensive. OTOH I have been marching through my own 10 kg and the results are very very satisfying!
Our next effort failed. I wanted to see the Agriturismo Galatea in Piano di Sorrento, a maker of traditional Sorrentina fiore di mozzarella among other delights, but they had a wedding reception! We did not learn until we had arrived in their thoroughly inaccessible location and had to find our way out of the tiny parking area and then down the mountainside again like mountain goats. This is a risk that you take when you visit these artisanal wonderlands - there's a similar place that we visited a few days later and they'd had weddings the days before and after, we got lucky that time.
But we did get an exciting view of the near-vertical towns on the north side of the Amalfi Coast (beautiful Sorrento is just 10 minutes from the Amalfi Coast, if you drive like a local - the hills are the same hills, but you're distracted by the glorious view to Vesuvius). Lorna was anxious about the heights, but like a good husband I was able to alleviate her anxiety by speeding through these spaces, thus displacing her fear of heights with her greater fear of imminent death.
Finally we returned to Sorrento. The Hotel Palazzo Guardati is awesome in every way! For once in the last 1000 km, we had a proper hotel room with a proper front desk and porters to help with our luggage. Our rooms were a suite, one room a couple of step up with a door, where I was exiled as a snorer, and the two women slept in the main room with easy access to the bathroom. I didn't weep over the situation, as my part of the suite had a private patio and I still had plenty of goodies from Calabria and from our friend Rocco in Puglia as well! Beyond that, they had a lovely rooftop bar, not yet crowded, but it became increasingly so while we were there.
We enjoyed a late lunch across from the hotel at Guaraccino Lounge Bar, Gnocchi alla Sorrentina, Parmigiana di Melanzane, Filetto di Orata con Pomodorini, Insalata Caprese. The lunch was not fabulous, but the people made it wonderful. We returned there, singly and en famille, several times during our few days in Sorrento. During that time we had several memorable meals, which makes me think that they put out extra effort for return customers. And so I returned, not many hours later, while Lorna and Melissa visited Bimonte, the family shop that makes those splendid cameos that Lorna wears.
Wouldn't you know it, the owner collects gins! And not just everyday gins, but the finest from all over the world. I said a prayer of thanks that I'd not need the car for a few days while I explored this unexpected foodie (drinkie?) bonanza. I had a martini of Silent Pool Martini Gin from Suffolk, England. Later Lorna joined me for a cheese plate, but I'm afraid I never recorded the details... hic! Then we got another cheese plate and a foccacia to bring up to Melissa, who was catching up with her own work issues.