I quote from the "optional excursions" section of the itinerary of our trip: "Flavours of Naples. Enjoy an Italian evening out in a restaurant situated right in the historical centre of Naples. The varied menu gives you the chance to sample delicious traditional Neapolitan dishes - something to remember when you get back home - including also wine and mineral water."

What I know now, but did not know then, is that the area that we visited was just down the road from the Castel Nuovo and the port of Napoli, which will come up again in the photos from tomorrow morning. Not that I could have done anything about it anyway since there was no time to explore.

It was during this excursion that we visited the Galleria Umberto I, which you will have seen in the preceding photos. And this here, the Rossopomodoro (red tomato, in English) is where we went to sample the aforementioned varied menu. The dinner was quite nice, actually; I certainly had no complaints about it.

Sadly, the only reason that I was able to find the location of the restaurant again (4 years after taking this photo) was because I had it starred on Google Maps. The restaurant itself is marked as "permanently closed". When this happened, and whether it was the result of Covid, I have no way of knowing. In any case, we shall never be able to recreate that experience. (Not that we could anyway, because of course most of the members of that tour group from 4 years ago have been scattered to the 4 winds.)

Before getting TOO melancholy, however, there is another thing that I know now but did not know then. Rossopomodoro was not some charming little local trattoria but rather a chain of franchises. Essentially, it is a significantly further upmarket version of Pizza Hut. (And I emphasise the "significantly upmarket" aspect there; I don't want you to get the wrong idea.) There are 60 branches in Italy everywhere from Aosta in the north-west, to Trieste in the north-east, to Palermo in Sicilia to Bari in the south-east. There are also some in Great Britain, France, Iceland, Denmark, Malta and it appears that there used to be some in Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Brazil and Canada. There were also some in the United States until last July where presumably they were annihilated by the Covid virus.

In terms of the menu, then, it's not so much a case of "something to remember" when you get back home, but something to order from MenuLog when you get back home. Or was, pre-Covid. Although that may be a tad unfair; this may be mass-market Italian food rather than a genuine locally cooked experience, but nonetheless there is always something particular and specific about Italian cooking when it's done in Italia. And besides, I suspect that the mindset at work was "tourists won't know the difference anyway".

It was a pretty good evening, regardless.