Pizzeria e Trattoria del Purgatorio — Restaurant in Naples

The man standing outside the restaurant trying to entice customers in should have been our first clue. Gino e Toto Sorbillo down the street had a huge line. Good restaurants don’t have to try to attract customers.

We should have known better. But based on the good reviews (which now seem highly suspect) we decided to go to this place for pizza our first night in Naples.

We ordered a green salad to start, which was just a pile of iceberg lettuce with a chunk of lemon and no dressing. We called the waiter over, thinking the lack of dressing was a mistake, and he grudgingly brought us some oil and vinegar - so no dressing was offered at all.

We also ordered two pizzas, both of which were not just mediocre, but shockingly bad. I ordered the fresca, which was supposed to have basil and oregano but had neither, just a lot of arugula and no sauce. The dough was tasteless and undercooked, the cheese wasn’t at all melted, and the pizza wasn’t even warm. My husband’s was pretty much the same - tasteless sausage, gummy and undercooked dough, no sauce, cold cheese, and it was barely warm.

We let the waiter know that our food was completely disappointing and he did nothing to rectify that. He charged us full price and also neglected to bring the sparkling water I’d ordered. Also, the wine was worse than the boxed wine you’d find in the U.S.

This place is disgraceful. It’s clear they don’t care about providing a good customer experience and don’t seem to take any pride in their food. Serving pizza this bad in Naples, of all places, is unforgivable.

There are many good pizza places in Naples and this restaurant does not deserve your business. The next day we went to Pizzeria da Attilio, about a 15-minute walk away, and had the Neapolitan pizza we’d been dreaming of - and at a much better price. (The green salad there, by the way, was only 3 Euros, versus 4 for the pathetic one here, and was delicious.)

Edited to add: I’m not buying the response below that the pizza was meant to be served cold. I’ve never heard of cold pizza anywhere else. Both of our pizzas weren’t hot. And if the salad was meant to be dressed by the customer, the dressing should have been served with it, which it wasn’t. Another review noted the same thing. Sorry,...

People, avoid this place ; scammers, take some notes.

First, they made us pay the wrong amount by card. After I noticed it, they paid us the difference in cash. Secondly, we noticed that they made us pay an extra bottle in the total amount of the bill. We told them, and they tried to tell us we had 2, although we actually had one. They eventually acknowledged that we only had one, and they tried to give us a bottle to take away. I said I wanted my money back, not an extra bottle, and the server left and said "thank you for the tip" !!! Come on, the sheer audacity of these guys !

I insisted, and they agreed to pay me back. They did so with only 5/10/20 cents, which was I guess perfectly in character for them... Anyway, what a loss, the pizza were good, but as a tourist, you should definitely walk 20 meters more and go eat in another pizzeria (the guy in the middle of the street asking us to come eat there should have given us a clue...).

EDIT following answer from the restaurant : Of course no one "remembers" it, I'm not surprised you don't. You still didn't address most of what I said. The behavior of your staff was highly unprofessional. Many other pizzerias don't scam people, and they also work in a 36°C environment. Many other clients accuse you of scamming them (I guess you also forgot that too), and you keep answering in a aggressive and...

Warning: this place is a classic tourist trap. I have had some of the best pizza in my life visiting the Campania region, but the pie here is laughably bad.

We probably should have followed our rule of not going to restaurants in tourist areas with someone pitching it from the sidewalk, but we thought the excessive number of five-star ratings on Google made it a safe bet. Boy were we wrong. As some other reviewers with bad experiences noted, our pizza had the wrong ingredients, was poorly cooked and lacked flavor.

The sauce, which is the heart of any good Neopalitan pizza, was simply not good. It was probably a blessing that there was hardly any of it on the pie anyway.

We specifically ordered a pizza with buffalo mozzarella — but if the glop of tasteless goo we got was buffalo, then I am the reincarnation of Maradona. We left most of our pizza uneaten despite being hungry.

Laughably, the green salad we ordered was undressed, tasteless iceberg lettuce with a wedge of lemon. We had to ask — politely — for some dressing and got a load of attitude along with the grudgingly delivered bottles of oil and vinegar.

I don’t like leaving bad reviews. But in this case I feel compelled. I’m very suspicious of the number of five star reviews. Either all those folks love clearly bad pizza … or perhaps all those reviews aren’t really from...