Some scents and flavors are inscribed in our memory. Each taste takes us back in time to when we were children. Closing our eyes, the contact of the palate is immediately associated with the image of a place or a person.

Grandma in the kitchen, or Sunday morning, when we woke up, the intense aroma of the sauce prepared by our mother wafted through the rooms of the house. Food is an inexhaustible source of emotions that tell and trace the story of our lives, family, loved ones and travels. 

From bread to pasta, ca’ pummarola

There are dishes and gestures that, more than others, have lingered in our culinary aura. “I come from a family of farmers. As a child, I used to wake up in the morning with the smell of freshly baked bread. It remained in my soul as well as in my memories indelibly. Part of the freshly baked loaves then were distributed to the whole neighborhood, which in turn, reciprocated,” says Carlo De Filippo, owner of Pineta 1903.

“I spent my childhood eating traditional peasant dishes, simple dishes, and the only ones cooked in my house. We used to eat pasta ca’ pummarola where the sauce was always tomato sauce and specifically tomato from San Marzano, areas in the province of Salerno where I grew up.”

A human heritage

The memory of the past permeates every corner of Pineta 1903 restaurant, a history that has been absorbed, ingested, and transformed in innovative and contemporary ways in the dishes and menus offered over the years by the restaurant’s owner and chefs.

And this attachment to tradition, this rich knowledge, and this human heritage are the pillars that have built the foundation of this hub of taste and what also drives people to return, always with the same curiosity and desire for surprise. 

Neapolitan research

A memory that has not stopped exclusively at home but through studies, travel, and relentless research has embraced an entire culinary tradition: Naples and the Amalfi Coast. One need only flip through the pages of the menu to realize this. Let’s take an example to understand the conceptual process behind each recipe better. 

“In historical Neapolitan cuisine, there is a dish called ‘o spaghetti do puveriello. It is a poor and emotionally rich dish containing simple ingredients: spaghetti, eggs, oil or butter, or sugar. It is a typical dish of postwar Naples and also represents the ability of a people to make do and make a tasty dish with few elements,” explains Carlo De Filippo. 

‘O Puveriello Arricchuto

A quick dish to prepare that satisfies all the senses. “The ancient recipe naturally calls for the eggs to be fried in lard,” De Filippo says, “One year in wanting to come up with something new but at the same time rooted in tradition, I went to conceptualize this dish in a modern key and above all by making it no longer so poor. I took Pastificio Verrigni’s gold-drawn smoked spaghetti, a malga butter from Trentino, a Slow Food presidium, and urchin eggs. So ‘o puveriello became arricchuto, that is, it was no longer of the poor man but of the enriched man, who renamed it ‘O Puveriello Arricchuto.” 

A traditional dish with its history, de-conceptualized and re-conceptualized in a modern form with ingredients that recall tradition but are highly prized.

It is the restaurant’s gastronomic philosophy, drawing on tradition to enrich it, surprising those who enjoy tasting it.