Friday, January 23, 12:00 noon
Members $60, guests $70

You bite into a slice of true Neapolitan pizza, followed by forkfuls of acqua pazza, frutti di mare, and caponata. The ground is rumbling, but you could care less, for you are in culinary heaven.

You awake from this food fantasy, your mouth watering. Were you in Naples? Pompeii? Perhaps. But you could just as easily have been at New York City’s Naples 45, where chef Christopher DeLuna re-creates la cucina marinara, the classic seafood-based cooking of Naples, along with other Italian regional specialties. Add to these dishes the rumble of the subway below and the bustle of the Midtown hordes in front of the window, and you might think you actually are in Naples, with the restless Mount Vesuvius nearby.

“The food is cooked with imagination and presented with heart,” Ruth Reichl wrote in The New York Times about Naples 45. Newly appointed chef DeLuna draws on his Italian heritage to maintain the restaurant’s high standards. DeLuna is a veteran of many highly regarded New York kitchens : Tropics Bar & Seafood House (where he was executive chef), Helmsley Park Lane Hotel, Union Square Cafe, Les Célébrités (under Christian Delouvrier) and Taliesin in the Millenium Hilton. His CV says he spends his free time reading international cookbooks, experimenting at the stoves, and trying out new restaurants, but most of all, “this good ole’ American boy just loves to go home and savor grandma’s Italian specialties.”

With the aid of head pizzaiolo Charles Restivo, a native of southern Italy who learned the pizza trade in the Naples area, DeLuna has helped to turn this Midtown eatery into an oasis for authentic Italian cuisine. Recently, it became one of only two restaurants in New York City to earn the coveted certification of “La Vera Pizza Napoletana” from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, awarded to those who respect the time-honored culinary tradition of Neapolitan pizza.