A note before you begin: this is the finest meal I have eaten at any restaurant. I say this having eaten at many of the world's best restaurants — all of which appear in this Greatest Hits series for their own extraordinary reasons. Francescana at Casa Maria Luigia surpassed them all. I want to be precise about why, because "best meal of my life" is a phrase that loses meaning through overuse. This post is my attempt to give it back its meaning. There is a moment in the early

This was my logic: Pizza is delicious. Since pizza is Italian, the best place to eat delicious pizza would be in Italy. Pizza, at least as we recognize it today, was invented in Naples, Italy. Therefore, I will find the best pizza in the world in Naples. The last step is where I went wrong, but not by much. Pizza was indeed invented in Naples, which is part of the Campania region of Southern Italy. Within Campania, and not terribly far from Naples, I found what may very

There are restaurants where the setting does so much of the work that lesser food might go unnoticed. Lo Scoglio da Tommaso is not that restaurant. It sits directly over the water in Marina del Cantone, with a private dock beneath the dining room and boats arriving from Capri, Positano, and Amalfi throughout the meal — and the setting is extraordinary. But the food is better. The Location Located in the tiny fishing village of Marina del Cantone in Massa Lubrense, Lo Scoglio