Oh come on, this is getting ridiculous. Apparently living here for over a year is not long enough to evaluate the food set before me, having travelled all over the North and eaten widely is not enough to evaluate the food set before me, having actually lived with Italians from all over the peninsula and sampled their cooking is not enough to evaluate the food set before me, I now have to go to their families and let them cook for me?
There’s more than a hint of “no true Scotsman” going on here. I mean, the amount of Italians I see eating in trattorie and various restaurants would attest to me, at least, that they don’t see anything particularly displeasing about the food they’re being served up. But food served in an Italian restaurant food is now not real Italian food? Please.
Seriously, when people come on holiday to Italy and then return to the UK or US, raving about the food, do you contend they’ve been taken in by the locals like famished street urchins, or they’ve eaten in restaurants?
You know, you’re not answering the question. I’m not talking about people on holiday, or even people who go to restaurants. I’m talking about you, because you started the thread. And you’ve just admitted that you’ve never even been to the south of Italy, something that seems startling for a person who has pronounced his opinion on Italian cuisine in its entirety.
But that’s OK, nevermind. I think for the moment that I’ve exhausted my resources for giving a shit about this particular topic.
Of course it’s a “no”. With what other cuisine must one travel to your flatmate’s hometown and have their family cook for you in order to evaluate it? The whole line of questioning is frankly bizarre, bordering on the absurd.
I’ve had southern Italian cuisine cooked by southern Italians for other southern Italians. If this isn’t sufficient to evaluate their dishes, well, to be honest, I really don’t give that much of a shit. I stand by my claim that Italian cuisine is vastly overrated, though still enjoyable.
I think part of the reason Italian cuisine is so highly rated is because it’s so highly accessible to a wide range of tastes. It’s very “safe” cuisine (for the most part) for people with unadventurous palates. While it’s not my favorite or in my top three, I do think it’s a wonderful cuisine. When done right, it really is sublime. For example, ossobuco with risotto alla milanese might be my favorite cold-weather dish.
Well, you can certainly stand by your claim but you’ve provided very poor arguments to support your claim:
You backed up the claim that Italian cuisine is ridiculously conservative by pointing out that it doesn’t use cumin and that hoi-sin duck is not available on pizza.
You support the claim that Italian cuisine is largely repetitive and boring by pointing out that you can’t get gluten-free food in restaurants or supermarkets.
You declare that Italian foods are “just plain overrated” because Italian cheeses are boring, because British cheeses are better. No support for this claim, nor for the claim that Italian restaurants are no better than a British restaurant for the same price.
You state that a “healthy Mediterranean diet” thing is largely a myth, because you don’t know what “Mediterranean diet” means.
And, you said Italian restaurants almost uniformly serve stale bread. Who is eating the fresh bread? Or does it come out of the oven stale? And, this doesn’t mean that Italian cuisine is overrated. It perhaps means that Italian restaurants are overrated.
Okay, I get it – this isn’t a Great Debate. You are merely expressing your opinion. You’re not a big fan of Italian cuisine, food, and restaurants. You can enjoy an Italian meal, but you can take it or leave it. Fine, but it’s a big leap from that to “Italian cuisine is overrated”.
BTW, what do you like the most about Italian cuisine?
While I think the OP’s taste in pizza is an abomination, to each his own.
However, being raised on food made by relatives who immigrated to the U.S. from Italy, I can state that almost without fail, whenever I eat at an Italian restaurant, I’m disappointed. The advice to try a home-cooked meal by one of the locals instead of eating out is something I’d suggest strongly. I think the OP will find this a far better gauge of Italian cuisine than anything else.
Haha, same here. Went to Florence on a school trip when I was… 16 I think ? Something like that. I’m over 30 now and I still remember that one pizza place. Ye gods. And don’t get me started on the cuttlefish ink pasta in Venice, 'cause I might just ruin my undies.
That being said, if you live in or around Paris, you should definitely give La Forchetta a try. It’s a little family joint Rue Daguerre, somewhere around Denfert-Rochereau. The agli e olio spaghetti is to kill for.
I did no such thing. I noted that Italian cuisine is conservative. It is. Saying otherwise is sophistry. I merely offered those two examples as examples of things that you cannot easily find in the country. An inability to find even mundane spices or herbs is a mark of conservativity in my opinion. An inability to find resturants serving cuisine that even a moderately sized British town offer, is, again, a mark of conservativity and insularity.
You, on the other hand, managed to dig up a single restaurant that served two dishes of tagliolini, two dishes of risotto, two dishes of tagliatelle, and so forth, as a mark of how forward looking modern Italian cuisine is. Presumably the “fusion” aspect you vaunted was the addition of mango in one of the dishes? Give me strength. :rolleyes:
Well, yes, if every damned meal contains the same set of ingredients then by my standards the cuisine is pretty boring. Perhaps you’re just easily pleased, or grew up on this diet so that’s what you’re used to?
What support would you have me provide, other than my own opinion? Are you under the impression that there’s some objective scale upon which we can judge the quality of cheese and/or restaurants? British restaurants, for the same price you pay in Italy, offer the same quality of food, more diverse food, and almost universally better service.
No it isn’t a big leap at all. If everybody is consistently raving about Italian cuisine, and then you find that it’s “just OK”, then it isn’t a big leap at all to say the cuisine is overrated.
Did you actually read the thread? I live with Italians from all over Italy and have eaten with them many times. People stop suggesting that I go and eat with “real Italians”. It’s bullshit. I have eaten with them, many times, and even if I haven’t, “real Italians” in Italy find the restaurants palatable enough to spend their money on every damned week.
As I said, there’s more than a hint of no true Scotsman here. Apparently no cuisine from the north of Rome is “real Italian cuisine”, you have to go to the south to find it. Apparently no cuisine served in restaurants is “real Italian cuisine”, you have to have them cook for you to find it. Apparently Italians living with me are not “real Italians” and I have to go to their homes to find the real Italians cooking real Italian food.
I just went back and read this and nearly killed myself laughing. You’re offering, within the context of British sandwiches, piadine for the Italians? Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight.
A piadina, for those not acquainted, is a dry, thin piece of flatbread usually served with thin, salty slices of cured ham or some other equally dry filling and then pressed together under a gigantic circular iron. The thing is so dry that you need to rub lentils into your gums for the next half hour after eating to reacquaint your mouth with the notion of moisture. Drinking too quickly after eating a piadina causes your gums to crack and bleed uncontrollably.
The kicker, though, is where this aberration is usually eaten: on the beach, in the height of summer!
Dude, you started babbling about Tesco prepackaged sandwiches, when you were the first in the thread to even mention Tesco. Nobody mentioned Tesco, prepackaged sandwiches, or anything similar until you mentioned it. If you want to be a wiseguy, don’t be surprised when people push back a bit.
Further, I’m still surprised you think piadine are worthy of recommendation. Tramezzini, yes. Italian club sandwich, or something similar, yes. A piadina. Hell no.
Sedentary lifestyles and them eating a lot more. Until recently the majority of the country was dirt poor. They were still eating roof rabbit (cats) in the Veneto within living memory due to necessity.
Don’t you mean “for fuck’s sake”? Or are you referring to a British fusion dish of fucks served in sake?
The fact that you’re getting so worked up is further evidence that you are incapable of being rational about this topic.
If you had just said “I’m not impressed with Italian cuisine”, then this thread would have gone in a different direction. But, in the OP, you present a detailed, bulleted argument to support your opinion, and your argument is very weak.
And, somehow, “conservativity” means that a cuisine is overrated? Okay, if you say so. Likewise insularity.
You provided two examples and I provided five: mango, ginger, orange, pear, and couscous. Also, it’s silly for you to rail against “two dishes” that have the same starch when one of the examples that you offer is pizza. What was the crust made of amaranth or spelt? And was the hoisin duck served on naan, pita, or matzo? I think you would have mentioned it if it was. And, even if it was, do you really think that means that Italian cuisine is overrated?
You say that “tortellini with ragu is not a different dish to capelletti with ragu” and now you’re implying that risotto with scallops and pesto is the same as risotto with saffron and squid ink. It’s clear that you have difficulty in making distinctions, subtle or otherwise. Further evidence of that difficulty: you say that there are “literally a million different types of stuffed pasta” and “a billion different types of pecorino”, and they’re all the same. So you are a master of hyperbole. I guess you think that makes your viewpoint valid. And, failing to acknowledge that you were wrong about “Mediterranean diet” is evidence that you have no interest in acknowledging that you know little about the subject that you introduced.
More hyperbole. And why every “damned” meal? Why are you so angry about this?
Nope, but your sweeping generalizations indicate that you are under that impression.
Actually, all that means is that you are different from “everybody”.
I’ll have to show this thread to a guy at work. He and his wife just came back from their great food pilgrimage to Italy.
I asked him how good the food was and his reply was, “I hope to never eat a sauce that contains tomatoes for the rest of my life.” They were extremely disappointed with the food for the very reasons listed in the OP, particularly the impossibility of getting anything NOT Italian.
Your second question is relevant only if the answer to your first question is “Yes”, which it’s not.
Have I said anything in this thread about Italian food being especially good, or deserving of some special status? Nope. i just find your arguments to be especially weak and I’m posting here (within the spirit of “fighting ignorance”) to make you aware of those weaknesses so that perhaps you will do better in the future when you present what you think is a rational justification of your opinion.
