Nick Lowe was once asked if he believed in heaven. 'No, I don't,' he answered, 'but I have heard Al Green sing.' Being likened to celestial joy has to be something of a recommendation, so when rock-chick Kathy Gilfillan asked the artist Susan Morley and me to accompany her to Vicar Sreet to hear the Reverend Al sing, the answer could only be a big 'yes'. I've always loved soul and gospel, it was part of my formative years, but I was amazed at the number of twentysomethings in the audience who even knew the words. Seems that good music can cross generations.

Susie and I had met Kathy in Dublin and we found ourselves with an hour-and-half before the concert - time enough I thought, to get in a quick bite to eat. We were parked not far from Dame Street and from somewhere within the remnants of my memory came a dimly recalled fact. There is a new pizzeria in Dame Street and a man I met some months ago, Gianni Brandi, would be cooking them. Gianni is a member of the family that has the oldest established pizzeria in Naples - and it was his ancestor of some generations back who invented the pizza Margherita. This classic pizza comes with tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil leaves, which three colours make up the Italian flag. A nice touch, because those were the colours of Queen Marguerita of Savoy.

Neither Kathy nor Susie took much persuading once I'd reminded them of this tale and we found Boccaccio's where Caesar's used to be. Inside it has the clean lines of a smart Roman bar, lots of wood, mirrors behind the counter, tables and chairs that are unmistakeably Italian in design and rather nice lighting. It feels right. Whatever way these disparate bits of design combine, it made me think of Italy instantly. We did keep our eyes on the clock and wondered if we'd have enough time. Gianni was adamant; not only was there time for a pizza, we'd have time for a antipasto as well.

Kathy chose an antipasto, which is the Italian equivalent of an hors d'oeuvre. Salami, prosciutto, bresaola, Parmesan and piquant Provolone filled her plate generously. Susie went for the prosciutto and melon, a real standard, and I had the Caprese salad, which is mozzarella, tomatoes and basil. Both Susie's and mine are such simple dishes that unless the ingredients are perfect the dishes don't work. In Boccaccio's it did; Susie's melon was ripe and sweet and the prosciutto very good, my salad had big leaves of fresh basil and buffalo mozzarella, which is as good as it gets. Kathy's was so generous that it took me and Susie to help her finish it. Neither Kathy nor Susie were drinking so I'd ordered a half carafe of the house red, a Montepulciano di Abbruzzo, a good and simple wine from near my Italian home. I even found myself pouring mineral water into it, something I'd do without thinking in Italy, but I don't think I've ever done here. Funny what an atmosphere can do.

We'd all ordered pizzas - a Margherita of course, for Kathy, a Caprese for Susie and a Capricciosa for me. Pizzas may be a simple form of snack, but they have a very long tradition and there's a huge gulf between a good one and a bad one. Bear with me while I digress a little. Italians are very fussy about what they put on their pizzas. They don't treat them as a base on which to put anything that you can find lurking at the back of the fridge. Pineapple chunks and sweetcorn are simply not an option. I mention this only to differentiate the pizzas that we got in Boccaccio's from some of the horrors that I've had presented to me under the same name of pizza.

So let's begin at the beginning. A pizza comes on a base made from flour, salt, yeast and water. Any other sort of base - and I've been handed pancake base, short-crust pastry and even stuff that I couldn't identify - are not pizza bases. It should be thin, crisp at the edges where there's no filling, cooked through, and the toppings should be cooked through as well. That's where the skill comes in: different toppings cook at different times, so you have to be careful. Mozzarella, for instance, cooks much faster than the base, so you can end up with a well-cooked base and burnt cheese. The trick is to cook the pizza in two passes, leaving the toppings that cook quickly to the second pass and including only the ones that take time in the first pass. In an ideal world the pizza is cooked in a wood-fired oven, which imparts the most wonderful taste to the base. But even without that, a really good base - what the Italians call 'la pasta' - that is cooked properly, will make an fine pizza even in an electric oven.

What we got were three excellent pizzas with good quality ingredients, each exactly as the traditional recipes require. If I had a small complaint it was only that the artichoke hearts on my Cappricciosa were pickled rather than preserved under oil, which left a taste of vinegar on my pizza that I could have done without. Time was ticking by inexorably and there was no time to try a dessert, like an Italian ice-cream, but while they were making up the bill we had the traditional liqueur to end the meal, a Sambuca for Susie and a Limoncello for me.

Limoncello is a lemon liqueur that is drunk all around the Campania, the hinterland of Naples. This one, like the best of them, came from the Amalfi peninsular where the lemon groves line the steep hills all the way to sea. Sipping it slowly had me thinking of the piazza in Ravello, looking down on Maiori and Minori, which has to be one of the most heart-rendering beautiful views anywhere in the world. Cutting things very fine we even managed a quick espresso before paying a bill of £31 for the food that we'd eaten. A tenner a head for two good courses is very reasonable and I liked the room too. However the Reverend Al was due to start his gig and there was no time left to linger, so it was of to Vicar Street for a short, but uplifting blast of gospel and soul.