Michael's on Naples Verified listing

Since fully reopening in after the pandemic, the long-loved Naples space has altered its menu multiple times to reflect season, ingredients, and innovation—with a wine list curated by General Manager Massimo Aronne and a food program steered by longtime Executive Chef Eric Samaniego.

And yet, really doesn’t have a reach beyond Naples and The Shore in the capacity that it not only should but definitively deserves.

The restaurant can easily boast of one of the city’s best bar programs—a continually changing seasonal cocktail menu paired with a steady negroni menu that includes quite possibly the wittiest play on a negroni, a negroni sour, that turns the sipping staple into a dangerous porch pounder of a cocktail…

Their pizza—full-on, unapologetically Neapolitan—is some of the best in the city, and their pasta, which rotates from handmade orecchiette and pappardelle to deep black squid ink tortellini and gorgeously purple beet casoncelli.

Samaniego’s talent, mixed with Arrone’s absurd knowledge about pairings, creates for one of the city’s most elevated, consistent, stellar Italian experiences.

Has Michael’s on Naples rightfully received its laurels in the past? Yes—something that tends for many to dismiss them as a restaurant they’ve seen at some point on the Best Of lists. But the reality is that we should see them as always on the Best Of list.

Photos by Brian Addison