For comedy writer and director Eduardo de Filippo, one of the geniuses of Italian and Neapolitan theatres of the 20th century, food always had great value.

For him and every southern Italian person, food is a way to appreciate and celebrate life.

Food was not just simple nourishment; it was something sacred that kept us alive and asked for love and respect.

His wife, Isabella Quarantotti De Filippo, writes in her book “Si cucine cumme vogli’i”, riedited by Guido Tommasi Editore in 2024:

His way of cooking and eating in the company of others was nothing sloppy or casual. On the contrary, it implied a scrupulous ritual through which he tried to create a harmony of primordial flavours in the kitchen and at the table, a communion of pleasure in the crucial act of nourishing oneself. He was greedy but without wantonness. He never forgot he was born poor.

Many recipes of Edoardo, included in the book, come from the Neapolitan peasant food he learnt during childhood from his beloved grandmother, Concetta Termini, a clever and creative woman.

At fifteen, he could cook and elaborate her recipes through various experiments.

Among his friends, legendary were his lasagne, Neapolitan rice sartù and the ragu. 

He loved having friends, colleagues and artists for lunch in his homes in Posillipo, on the islet of Isca, in Rome and Velletri.

Dario Fo, in his preface to the book by Isabella Quarantotti, writes:

I will never forget that genius idea of projecting the aroma of the ragu with ziti of Donna Rosa, not only onto the stage but also towards the parterre, flooding the boxes up to the gallery. Each spectator could imagine themselves with a plate in their hands, filled with steaming ziti, a lucullian and inviting dish. Other than sight and sound, the smell entered the theatre in full glory!

De Filippo wanted real food to eat on the theatre stage, tables laden with different dishes: steaming ragu, pasta, rigatoni, fish, and onion omelette. Everything had to express the concept of plausible.

Think of the banquet in Napoli Milionaria (1945), that of Saturday, Sunday and Monday (1959), the table set in Filomena Marturano (1946), the Mayor of Rione Sanità (1960), to Natale in Casa Cupiello (1931).

In Saturday, Sunday and Monday, as I was saying, De Filippo talks about family dramas but also ragu and its secrets, about poor, essential and tasty Neapolitan cuisine, patient and philosophical, I would say.

Ragu in Napoli is something you cannot mess around; you love it or hate it. From the French word ragout, which is mettre en appetit, reawaken, stimulate the appetite, people prepare it rigorously with celery, onion, carrot, two or even more cuts of meat, beef or pork, tomato sauce, and simmer (pippiare, as they say in Naples) slowly for many hours.

Eduardo dedicated a well-known poem to the ragu, ‘O rraù.

‘O rraù ca me piace a me
m’ ‘o ffaceva sulo mammà.
A che m’aggio spusato a te,
ne parlammo pè ne parlà.
Io nun sogno difficultuso;
ma luvàmell”a miezo st’uso.
Sì, va buono: cumme vuò tu.
Mò ce avèssem’ appiccecà?
Tu che dice? Chest’è rraù?
E io m’a ‘o mmagno pè m’ ‘o mangià…
M’ ‘a faje dicere na parola?
Chesta è carne c’ ‘a pummarola.
The ragu I really taste,
Was my mother’s best.
As since I’ve married you,
I’ve forgotten that menu,
I don’t want to give you a trouble,
But forget about, you’re not able.
All right, as you want,
It’s not a quarrel that I want.
You pretend this is “ragu”?
And I eat it in front of you.
Let me please say something,
this is only meat and tomato thing¹.

As Eduardo put it, we can not mention the coffee, made only with the Neapolitan percolator!

In his comedy Questi Fantasmi (1945), the coffee monologue perfectly synthesises the Neapolitan coffee culture. Its symbolic ritual and daily value evoking unique joy and happiness.

Here is an extract of the monologue on the balcony:

To us Neapolitans, you cannot take away this little unload at the balcony. I, for example, could renounce everything but this cup of coffee that I sip out in peace after a one-hour nap after lunch. And I need to prepare it myself, with my own hands. This four-cup coffee machine, but you can also make six, and if the cups are small, also eight for my friends …

Coffee is so expensive…the new generations have lost these habits, which, in my opinion, are at a certain point the poetry of life, since, apart from filling your time, they also give a certain serenity of the spirit.

On the beak, can you see the beak? (he takes a coffee machine in his hands and points at the beak of the machine). Here, what are you looking at? This one, on the beak, I put this paper cone (he shows it). It seems nothing, but the cone has a precise task […] the dense smoke of the first flowing coffee, which is the most condensed and does not dissolve in the air.

(He pours the content of the machine into the cup and prepares to drink it) Is that alright for you? Here it is! Thank you. (he drinks)

Wow, this is coffee. (utters) It is chocolate!

You see how little it takes to make a man happy: a cup of coffee, drunk calmly out here with a lovely neighbour across the street.

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