Manuela, like many Neapolitans who emigrated abroad, used to make periodic trips home to see her family. On one such trip in 2012, she went to her grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner. As one does in Naples when a relative returns to the ancestral home, her grandmother prepared a ragù sauce for her. It was a simple meal, but one that would forever change Manuela’s life. When she finished eating, Manuela made the ceremonial scarpetta (dipping bread in the remaining sauce). Then a flash of inspiration came to her. “I thought, ‘Why isn’t there a place where you can eat only meat sauce? Where you can do the scarpetta like at home?’” she tells us.

With a gastronomic culture that dates back almost 3,000 years, it’s no wonder that tradition plays an important role in Neapolitan restaurants. Many of our favorite places in the city have been run by the same family, in the same spot, for four or more generations. In fact, we often view this doggedness as a quality guarantee of sorts. But that doesn’t automatically discount new entries to the dining scene. Even some of the most recent additions can still be steeped in tradition, like Januarius, a restaurant born under the star of San Gennaro (Saint Januarius), the patron saint of Naples – it has solid cultural, aesthetic and culinary roots despite only opening late last year.

On a stormy night sometime in the mid-9th century, as the legend goes, a Greek pilgrim named Pontus sought refuge underneath a Roman aqueduct in Salerno, some 50 kilometers south of Naples along the Amalfi Coast. With rain pounding down on the town and debris flying everywhere, Pontus took a terrible blow to his arm and found himself gravely wounded. Just as he sought treatment for his wound, Pontus noticed that a fellow Italian traveler called Salernus was also wounded, but applying seemingly innovative dressings to his injury. Fighting back superstitions and embracing his medical curiosity, Pontus approached Salernus to inspect his bandaging technique. As Salernus explained his methods to the Greek, two additional travelers, Helinus, a Jew, and Abela, an Arab, passed under the same aqueducts.

Since mid-December of last year, it’s felt like Naples has been at the center of the world, at least gastronomically speaking. Most significantly, UNESCO added the Neapolitan art of pizza making to its list of “intangible cultural heritage.” It’s not merely recognition of Neapolitan pizza as a beloved dish, but also of the important ancient art that was developed in the city and passed down from generation to generation of pizzaioli. The Mediterranean diet also continues to dominate the news cycle. In fact, a department was created at the Città della Scienza (“City of Science”) museum in Naples specifically to study this diet. And many of the city’s restaurants are also, in a way, doing something similar: the focus has lately been on researching ancient gastronomic traditions and recreating them with only the best raw materials.

Elena Ferrante’s much-loved novel My Brilliant Friend and its sequels seduced the literary world. And now a new television adaption, which recently debuted on HBO, is bringing this coming-of-age story set in Naples to an even broader audience. Over the course of what many call the Neapolitan novels, the two main characters, friends Lila and Elena, traverse the city. We decided to follow in their (fictional) footsteps, albeit with a focus on all things food.

The team behind Salumeria Upnea, a modern trattoria cum exhibition space in Naples, is not exactly what you’d expect: Gennaro, Luigi, Stefano and Antonello, three pharmaceutical researchers and one lawyer, respectively, were deskbound at a pharmaceutical company not that long ago. Yet these four friends decided to risk everything for their two passions: photography and quality food. The first step in realizing their dream was founding a cultural association in an old building on Spaccanapoli, one of the three narrow streets that traverse the heart of the ancient city center. Here they held photography courses and photo exhibitions that invariably ended in long dinners with friends; after more exhibitions, and more dinners with friends, Gennaro’s cooking talents saw greater acclaim.

Take a small space in a strategic location, add two young and idealistic owners, and finish with traditional Neapolitan dishes made with the finest raw ingredients – this is Taverna a Santa Chiara’s recipe for success. Everything began with the passion of two young Neapolitans, Nives Monda and Potito Izzo, for specialty artisanal food products from the Campania region. These types of products are not necessarily hard to find – Campania is home to many excellent small producers. Yet high quality often comes at a high cost, especially when compared to mass industrial products sold through large distribution chains.

“His name was Mr. Antonio, and they called him the captain,” says 35-year-old Giusy Aiese, launching into the story of La Taverna del Buongustaio. “He was a wine producer from the province of Caserta, and he established a wine-making cellar here in the Fascist period, around 1930.” As we listen to Giusy recount the history of the tavern, we can’t help but think about hers: she comes from a family tree brimming with lovers of Neapolitan cuisine. Her 65-year-old father, Gaetano, a genius in the kitchen, has run La Taverna del Buongustaio since 1996, the year he bought the restaurant from Francesco de Micco, another excellent cook and, funnily enough, Gaetano’s wedding witness.

Throughout Italy, Naples is known as the “city of coffee” – the Neapolitan caffè is synonymous with high-quality brew. And within the city, there are a number of stories and legends that swirl around the black stuff. Coffee is far and away the most popular caffeinated drink in the city. Neapolitans are not tea drinkers. In fact, most see it as a kind of medicine, probably because when you’re sick to your stomach the doctor recommends eating white rice and drinking tea. But it’s not just about the coffee itself. In Naples, drinking coffee is a true ritual, a complex set of unwritten norms, customs and ancient habits.

We recently spoke to author Elizabeth Minchilli about her new book, “Eating My Way Through Italy” (St. Martin’s Griffin; May 2018). After a lifetime of living and eating in Rome, Minchilli is an expert on the city’s cuisine, as evidenced by her popular blog, her Eat Italy app and her book “Eating Rome: Living the Good Life in the Eternal City” (2015). In her most recent title she writes about the dishes, customs and recipes that she’s discovered during her travels across Italy. Rather than an encyclopedic guide to the country, the book is a spirited and intimate look into Minchilli’s own experiences and the meals that have led her off the beaten track.

We’ve got a thing for small, family-run spots in Naples, particularly those that are multigenerational. If a restaurant or bakery or producer has been open for at least a century and has always stubbornly stood in the same place, continuity and quality of product are all but guaranteed. Take, for instance, Cantina del Gallo in Materdei. Established in 1898 and run by four generations of the Silvestri family, this is one of the few real outdoor taverns left in Naples. Over the years, this cozy, simple spot has attracted artists, intellectuals, musicians, travelers and many Neapolitan students looking for good food at reasonable prices.

On a recent visit to the market of Sant’Antonio Abate, a pilgrimage site for fresh produce, we made friends with Salvatore, a young Neapolitan chef who was buying fruit and vegetables for his restaurant. We thought nothing of it until we bumped into him again, this time when he was buying fresh bluefish, the symbol and pride, he told us, of his restaurant. Our curiosity piqued, we asked where he worked. Mimì alla Ferrovia, he told us, a name we immediately recognized – it’s one of the custodians of Neapolitan gastronomic orthodoxy. And Salvatore Giugliano, an innovative young chef of 27, is now at the helm of this historic restaurant.

Several thousand years ago, or so the story goes in Naples, Lucifer and Jesus had a massive showdown in the rarified kingdom of heaven. After a raging session fueled by sibling rivalries, and which likely included satanic petulance and the occasional errant lightening bolt, God, as any parent of battling children can grasp, had had enough of the celestial brawling. One can almost imagine Jesus yelping, “He started it,” as Lucifer tosses a fireball in his direction. So God cast Lucifer into the depths of hell – consigning him to an eternity of fire, brimstone and heat. (In the original pagan legend, this quarrel was between Bacchus and Pluto; after Christianity swept across the region, Neapolitans changed the names of the main characters, but the story remained the same.)

Dozens of urban legends swirl around the city of Naples – strange stories repeated a thousand times that, somewhere along the line, become credible. One of those urban legends concerns biscotti all’amarena, or black cherry cookies: people often say that they are made from day-old cakes. To create this typical Neapolitan sweet, bakers chop up pan di spagna (sponge cake) – the bit that is supposedly reused – and then mix it with black cherry syrup, cocoa and cinnamon. The mixture is then covered with a short-crust pastry shell and baked as a loaf, after which they’re cut into small rectangles.

“Mamma mia!” exclaims our Californian friend, as he tastes a slice of cod carpaccio for the first time. Better yet, let’s call this dish, made by one of the oldest fish shops in Naples, Norwegian stockfish sashimi. We are in Porta Capuana, and Vincenzo Apicella is carefully slicing dried fish (stockfish is an unsalted fish preserved only by cold air and wind) that has been rehydrated. He seasons the very thin fillets simply, with the juice of a fragrant Sorrento lemon, and serves them together with Sicilian green olives. The dish is proof, if it was needed, that good food tastes best when it is prepared as simply as possible.