Rione Luzzatti is an ugly neighborhood. That’s not particularly surprising to anyone who has read My Brilliant Friend, the first of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels (or watched the television adaptation) – the two main characters, friends Lila and Elena, grew up in this neglected and working-class area. Built following a simple design after the Second World War and comprising anonymous white buildings, Luzzatti today is defined by decaying structures and poorly kept public spaces. Yet when I first crossed it with my Vespa (well before Ferrante’s novels put it on the radar), I felt that it was a real place, a neighborhood of busy people, of workers. In short, I liked it, even if it was ugly!

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.