When I travel and need to kill time during the day because I'm too tired to do more sightseeing, there's normally two options. One is an afternoon tea break, and another is a drinks, preferably local brews. We did both on the last day of our recent trip to Italy when we were feeling a little tired. Let's start with our afternoon tea first.
Gran Caffe Gambrinus is a 150 year old establishment in Naples, Italy. It's located next to Piazza del Plebiscito and the Royal Palace of Naples. Like many iconic cafés, it boasts many famous customers over the years such as Oscar Wilde, Sigmund Freud, Ernest Hemingway, Luciano Pavarotti, and Angela Merkel to name a few.
The lonely counter
It was very busy when we arrived, and there were queues left right and centre. The caffe has an outside and an indoor seating area, a takeout pastry counter, and another pastry counter on the other side where you can stand and have a quick cup of coffee and pastries. Surprisingly, there was hardly anyone at this counter even though it was only 10 steps away from the takeout counter.
The takeout counter
Look at how busy the other side was. It was jam packed with people. There was a queue to pay for your purchases, that extended outside. After you pay, you join a second queue at the counter to collect your pastries. To be honest, I can't work out how that works. There are so many different types of pastries, how can you know what to buy before you see and choose? Any Italians around that can explain to us silly tourists that don't speak Italian 🙃?
In addition, there's a third queue outside for the outdoor seating. That's the woman in white wearing sunglasses on the right.
The fourth queue
Originally we were queuing outside in the third queue because we didn't realise there was indoor seating. Luckily hubs spotted a shorter fourth queue for the indoor seating area. That's the people on the left. The people on the right are in queue two.
We sat down at last
After a lot of queues, we finally sat down inside. The ambience was lovely and opulent as you would expect of an iconic historic café.
They even have a grand piano which I think the pianists on Hive would love.
I had already seen the pasteries in the shop was absolutely mouth watering, so much to choose from. That's why I couldn't work out how you can pay before selection. Even I can't cope if it was in an English speaking cafe, let alone an Italian speaking one.
Anyway, with so many selections we opted for a mixed selection of 5 different ones pasteries. There's a pistachio sfogliatelle, that's the one with a green blob on the top. Sfogliatelle is a flakey layered pastry from this region with creamy fillings. To it's right is a rum Baba, it's popular here as well. I think the next one is called zeppola. It's a pastry case with lemon filling. The tube in the front is a Cannoli. And I don't know what the last one is called but I had it a few times. It's a pastry case with ricotta filling. It's very nice especially when freshly baked and warm.
And finally, the drinks. I didn't go for my normal cappuccino because there were some interesting options in the menu. I can't remember what the one on the left is called. It was a house special and lemon based. The one on the right is simply called Gambrinus. It's an espresso with, sugar, cocoa and lot's of cream. The espresso itself is strong and very nice and once you mixed everything together the balance is just right. Perfecto!!
My verdict
Surprisingly, for such an iconic café in the city, the prices weren't too bad. The plate of pasteries were €12, and each of the coffee was something like €6.50. Some of the other "iconic cafes" I've been to charge €10 per coffee, so I think this is a pretty good deal. Great place to chill out for a few hours in Naples. Just watch out for all the queues!!!
