Restaurant reviews: La Cueva Argentinian Restaurant, Naples, Italy

Jamie Oliver’s television series in which he traveled around Italy hoping to rekindle his love of cooking showed just how chauvinistic the Italians are about their cuisine. Wherever you go in Italy the people for that region will claim that theirs is the one that has contributed most to Italian cuisine. However, the experts seem to agree that it is Naples and the Campania region in which it is found that has produced the best known Italian dishes which are now eaten all over the world. The colourful Inslata Caprese, Sorrento lemons which are made into the fabulous limoncello liqueur and the most highly regarded buffalo mozzarella all come from this region. However, it is pizza that is probably the most celebrated and best-known dish from Campania and it was first prepared at the Palazzo Reale di Capodimonte in the late nineteenth century by the chef Esposito.

As you can imagine pizza is on the most popular items on the menu in restaurants in Naples – well all Italian ones. Don’t get me wrong – I love Italian food; not just pizza and pasta but all those delicious dishes like “saltimboca” or “osso bucco” or a rich Tuscan bean soup. It’s just that I eat so much Italian food at home that when faced with the prospect of a whole week of Italian food I couldn’t get really excited about it. Of course, the food we did have in Naples was excellent and so much better than my attempts back home but after a few days I yearned for something other than Italian food.

On the surface, the only other restaurants in town were Chinese and neither of us are big fans of Chinese food but a stroll around the Piazza Amadeo area one afternoon unearthed La Cueva – an Argentinian restaurant tucked away just off a tiny square. We went in for a drink and found the staff friendly and welcoming; when a young guy came in trying to sell little animals and birds carved from wood they bought one from him and gave him a drink on the house. I can only think that in England they’d have turfed him out using a broom! We returned to eat the following evening – it happened to be the night of one of Italy’s group matches in the European Championships.

As you enter there is a bar area with a couple of tables but most people stand at the bar. You are as welcome to pop in for a drink as to eat (although I guess they’d probably welcome the money from diners more!) and it is a rather pleasant place for a drink. Unless you don’t enjoy football on this particular evening because all the staff and