Pizzeria Concettina ai Tre Santi — Restaurant in Naples

A comment by a pizza-loving Italian for the English-speaking audiences. And no, I do not have personal quarrels with anyone at the restaurant, I come visiting from a different region altogether, first time ever.

I will have to leave a bad review, contrary to all expectations - the place was even recommended to us word of mouth. Especially when I ended up paying for a pizza like I did in Brussels or Paris and the ones abroad were better (see "MENU" below for details).

LOCATION: The back garden area is extremely pleasant and has a very nice table set up.

STAFF: The staff was kind to us at the beginning. As some people with strollers were coming through the back of the garden rather than the front (accessing the restaurant from the front requires taking a few tight steps), we were quickly asked to stand up by our own table, so that the kitchen runner could move a few heavy plants and vases to allow them in. This lasted a few minutes, with us standing in the middle of the dining area, in a restaurant that clearly aims at doing high-end hospitality. Main takeaway for the restaurant: just do not have a table in the spot where you expect to allow people with strollers through an improvised back-entrance. Perhaps, even go to the extent of creating an appropriate access through the front? The waiters did not apologise for this throughout the process, aside from the poor runner who did not have to do it anyway.

All in all, the overall impression could be better without having to go through the episodes we experienced, so i leave some space.

MENU: The appetizers were good but overpriced GIVEN the amount of food provided. I see many pictures of the fried stuffed courgette flours, but contrary to these, we only had ONE on the plate, not three as I see around. Way too few food for an asking price of EUR 3 in any Italian region and definitely so for Naples. The other appetizer was indeed the best thing we have had there, very tasty and the lemon zest adds a great element of pleasant surprise.

DO NOT order the pizza "Omaggio alla Puglia". In fact, it is not technically a pizza, but an excessively small pizza dough with tomato cherries and burrata on top. Absolutely not worth EUR 14 which, without getting into the ethos of pizza being a popular dish, cannot be justified in light of the product delivered. Please see the pictures and judge by yourselves. The width did not exceed 16-18 cm in diameter, too.

Once asked how the pizza was, I replied saying that I expected a pizza, whereas this was more like a "focaccia" (can't remember the translation to this in English). The waiter took it way too personally by trying to convince me it is an actual pizza and proceeded to act weirdly at first, then completely ignoring us for the next 15 mins. No excuses here, him and another 4-5 waiters were standing together chatting from time to time, presumably also chatting about us. In other words, they had time to attend our table. At some point, without ever being asked if we wished for a dessert or coffee, we had to ask where we should pay.

WAITING TIME: quite long considering we had sat down at 19:10, we received our appetizers at 19:32 and were served our pizzas at 20:02. I can see why other comments mention tremendous waiting times, they are not efficiently organised and this could impact peak hour.

GLUTEN FREE: Their gluten free dough was slightly about average, but the whole pizza was undercooked, with messed up ratios of mozzarella and tomato sauce. This latter was completely raw, giving the pizza a sour taste and one that does not go away easily - we are still processing it, 4 hours later and even after a long walk. In other words, the only real pizza (albeit gluten free) that got to the table was displaying poor...

Wow. This is the WORST eating experience I’ve had in Italy so far. REALLY wish I had sorted google reviews by “recent” since it’s obvious this place used to be good and has gone way downhill.

We were SO excited to eat here after we saw it in a guidebook AND our Italian friend recommended it (but she hasn’t lived in Napoli in a couple years). This is the first Italian restaurant I’ve been to where the service was extremely RUDE. Every time we asked for something (“asked” = ordered), our server acted extremely put out, like he was unhappy to serve us. A frown on his face and no hospitality from start to end.

It took 20 minutes to get our menus. It took 20 minutes more to get our wine ordered (the smallest 10€ glass of wine I’ve ever seen…not kidding, check the other reviews). It took 20 more minutes to order our pizzas.

Then our server BLEW HIS SNOTTY NOSE in front of us, then immediately proceeded to keep serving food without washing his hands! I’m not even germaphobic but that’s disgusting.

When I go out to eat while traveling I’m prepared to wait and be patient. I understand different countries have different service practices and I’m fine with that (I was a server for 10+ years, and I get it). But my patience ran out once they started acting like jerks! And to clarify: it wasn’t that busy!!! The servers were working in concert to help all the tables around us that had ordered a tasting menu, which meant they bustled by our table and looked at us about 40+ times before they offered to get us a drink/food/menu etc. They were also joking and chatting with each other every chance they got, which made us feel the dichotomy of their bad moods when they talked to us with absolute apathy/unfriendliness.

I am not someone who ever thinks “I’m a tourist so they don’t like me” but at this restaurant it might be true? Otherwise I don’t understand why we were treated like dirt the whole time we were there. I would recommend to stay FAR away from this place, and I’m so sad we lost what could have been a magical dinner in wonderful Napoli on this rude place. Two...

This was our first time in Naples and we knew we wanted to eat the local (and original!) pizza. We've collated a bunch of pizzerias to check out but our hotel manager said his favourite (and the best pizza) was at this place. So we planned our meandering around Naples to end up here, and it's a little bit out of the way but very very worth the extra effort.

If you follow Google Map, it'll take you to the corner pizzeria which I think is for takeaway but they promptly showed us to the sit down area a couple of doors away. Still small and cosy; the waiters have big smiles and speak English, at least enough to explain the pizzas to us and to make recommendations.

We ended up with a margherita pizza as this is the most traditional and my wife insisted on it. I took the recommendation of their specialty and had a stuffed crust pizza called the San Gennaro. See the pictures - no use my trying to describe them.

How did they taste? Well, these are pizzas about 30cm (12in) in diameter. When they arrived, my wife said we over-ordered but at the end we over-ate instead! My wife's first bite and she said the cheese is thicker than the crust! My stuffed pizza's crust was delicious on its own, and the slices were super rich but balanced out great.

I should mention that there's a pot of basil on every table. And given how rich the pizzas are (tons of fior di latte!), we did add a couple of leaves to cut the richness and that also went very well.

They also recommended a couple of beers that we really liked. Enough that we were looking through the supermarkets for the brand but sadly could never it.

Both pizzas are probably the best we've every eaten. And that's saying a lot for two people who've eaten pizza in many countries (made by Italian chefs, michelin starred chefs, etc.) and who own a shelf worth of pizza...