26/09/2026
“Each day, Luigi Sorvino, whom many still call Gigione – an augmentative nickname probably referring to his size and lively attitude – sits in his chair at the entrance of Osteria Donna Teresa. Inside the small dining room are nine wooden tables with straightforward, domestic place settings and wooden chairs with straw seats. In his eighties, Gigione still checks everything and everyone entering the place, greeting guests and waiting for the restaurant’s service to begin, when he will occasionally pass by the tables to praise the dishes on the menu or hail more bottles of red and white w**e, which – along with the delicate extra virgin olive oil and a few vegetables – are from his own farm, which he set up in 1980 in Fasani di sessa Aurunca, a small rural town in the Caserta area. ‘He notices everything: one might think he can’t hear much, but he has ears and eyes even in the back of his head!’ his daughter – also named Teresa – says.
Gigione’s wife, Anna, is hidden in the tiny kitchen at the back of the restaurant, busy over the stove, cleaning vegetables and prepping other ingredients for the unvarying, ultra-comforting recipes she inherited from the late Donna Teresa, her mother-in-law. Teresa’s in charge of supplies and management, yet she is always supported by her parents, whom she calls ‘the pillars.’
Together, the three run the family restaurant in the Vomero borough, only a few metres away from the bustling Vanvitelli Square and eponymous metro station. Open for lunch and dinner every day except Sundays, they don’t take reservations, so there’s often a small crowd outside waiting for a table.
Inside, very little has changed over the last hundred years aside from the table mats, which replaced the obsolete vinyl tablecloths: ‘We try to make things nice, but we would rather spend on good quality food than on trimmings. And our customers adapt themselves to the place, more than the other way round,’ Teresa says with pride.’
Read more in the Naples issue of Fare Magazine, available on our shop at the link in bio
Words by Luciana Squadrilli
Photography by Serena Russo Photographer
