How To Recognize (and Avoid) Fake Italian Restaurants
Italians from Italy don’t really eat spaghetti with meatballs — so if you see them on the menu, there’s something wrong
Hello readers, here’s an Italian girl, wife and freelance journalist speaking. I just discovered Medium and I realized that I could finally write the article I always dreamed of: The article that all Italians who have ever been abroad and had the misfortune of eating “Italian food” would like to write — an article revealing the five biggest secrets to recognize and avoid fake Italian cuisine.
Trust me, you will be shocked by how much you have been deceived “bite after bite”, but after reading what follows you can finally tell everyone the truth, because you will know. So thanks in advance for your help.
Brief introduction: real Italian cuisine is mainly based on freshness and high-quality ingredients. Besides, Italian traditional diet is healthy: the so-called “Mediterranean Diet” has been recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and our life expectancy is the highest in the world after Japan (Life expectancy at birth, UN World Population Prospects 2015). Populations that follow the Mediterranean diet pattern shown, for example, a 50% lower rate of cardiovascular mortality due to cardiovascular disease and show the highest longevity (more information here).
You didn’t know? That’s probably because Italian food you find just outside Italian borders is 90% “fake food”: from counterfeit Italian products in supermarkets to “Frankenstein-courses” in restaurants that of Italy have only a very vague memory. The distance from reality is more or less that of a Picasso painting, but with no artistic value.
To us, Italians, it is not very clear how the succulent recipes of our tables turned during the journey into nightmarish food. Anywhere here I am, trying to save our cuisine’s reputation, or to make a change, a little change. Okay, even a very little one would be fine. Ready? I’m revealing you
THE 5 SECRETS TO RECOGNIZE AUTHENTIC ITALIAN CUISINE.
1 — WE NEVER EVER EAT SPAGHETTI MEATBALLS OR PASTA WITH A STEAK
In Italy spaghetti or any other kind of pasta with meatballs (inside or on the side) basically, do not exist! You can perhaps find some family in southern Italy that cooks spaghetti (not overcooked spaghetti) and put meatballs in it, but at least 9 out of 10 Italians have never eaten spaghetti meatballs in their lives. This is not a typical Italian recipe like spaghetti with tomato sauce and basil, carbonara or lasagne. We usually only have pasta as the first course and only after (I’m serious: AFTER) we may have meatballs with a side dish. Why are we always reading “spaghetti meatballs” on your menus? Mystery!
Someone told me once that misunderstanding comes from decades ago, when Italian workers abroad used to bring their lunch in a single box/container, so that’s it: first and second course mixed in a new whole course that got the spaghetti meatballs name! Another accredited explanation is that poor Italian immigrants in the USA, who could only afford spaghetti with tomato sauce, have subsequently added meatballs as the cheapest meat they could find. Anyway, remember that: in no authentic Italian restaurant (not Italian-American restaurant), you will ever see pasta in the same dish with meatballs, a steak, or a cutlet, or a sausage, or an escalope and so on. We are not like Japanese with rice, and pasta is not a side dish at all! (That’s a good clue to understand who is promising real Italian cuisine and who is only trying to indulge you.)
2 — OUR TABLECLOTHS ARE NOT RED AND WHITE CHECKERED (AND IN OUR RESTAURANTS NOBODY’S SINGING OPERA OR TRADITIONAL SONGS)
No, we almost never eat on red and white checkered tablecloths, neither in high-quality restaurants nor at home. Okay, maybe if we are having dinner with friends in our country house and we accidentally have our grandma’s red and white checkered tablecloth as the only clean tablecloth left. In no other case! About music: yes, we do love music, like many other people, but we do not sing the song “Oh Sole Mio” (which IS NOT FROM VENICE, so please don’t ask gondoliers to sing that) or listen to it while having dinner. Probably almost no one, except people in the South for weddings, sings or listens to “Oh Sole Mio” at all. As for opera music: see above.
3 — WHAT CARBONARA LOOKS LIKE
First: In CARBONARA pasta there is not a single trace of cream or milk. The only dairy product you find in Carbonara is a typical and seasoned cheese called PECORINO grated over it. Second: eggs are meant to become a kind of smooth sauce and not scrambled eggs, or omelet, or on the contrary a raw sticky thing. Third: to make Carbonara we do not use bacon, but pork cheek (GUANCIALE), which is as obvious a different part of the animal. If you go to Rome and demand or even kindly ask for other ingredients, you may not come back. I warned you.
4 — CAPPUCCINO DEADLINE IS 12 AM
Cappuccino in Italy is for breakfast, maybe a late breakfast, but ONLY for breakfast. It may just be tolerated for an afternoon snack with biscotti, but don’t say that too out loud. The comfort zone of Cappuccino in Italy is breakfast and its deadline is noon. No way there could be an upgrade and drink it during or at the end of a meal corresponds to blasphemy. If you wish, you may always have an Espresso, no matter where, when or why. Nobody will judge you for that, but if you ask for a Cappuccino at the end of a meal, especially a dinner, prepare to face the consequences. Suggestion: ask for AMARO or DIGESTIVO and don’t think about it anymore.
5 — THINGS WE DON’T WANT TO SEE ON OUR PIZZA
Real pizza, that in Italy is used as “comparison sample”, is MARGHERITA PIZZA, the very first pizza made in honor of the Queen Margherita of Savoy by a chef from Naples. Ingredients on the top of Margherita are: tomato sauce, basil and mozzarella FIOR DI LATTE or BUFALA, a variety of fresh mozzarella cheese from Campania region (of which Naples is the main city) that melts like a soft cloud (you should see white clouds on you pizza, not yellow and/or tiny wires!). That’s all folks! Of course, we have other variants with other ingredients on the top, but these do not contemplate excessive mixes like ham, sausages, eggs, and an entire vegetable garden all-together. Not even stuff like pineapple, sushi, spaghetti (again: see point 1), steaks, chopsticks, mayonnaise or ketchup (on pizza: yuck! / on fries: yummy!) are admitted.
So, finally, you now have the tools to discover the authentic Italian restaurants in your own country too. Of course, if you had the chance to come here we wait for you with open arms, on our non-checkered tablecloths, singing only if tipsy, after you probably took a late train (unfortunately, that’s not a stereotype).
Sources:
https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/mediterranean-diet-00884
