The government of Mexico has decreed that only white corn, not yellow can be used for human consumption.
So any Mexican restaurant in the U.S. using tortillas made from yellow corn is breaking the rules. Don’t be a party to this transgression!
Those breads may be “white breads” as opposed to “brown breads” . But in the US, all of those breads are called by their actual name - nobody says “white bread” and means “ciabatta”. I am not sure what the Chorleywood process is but in the US, "white bread " is generally used to refer to mass produced, pre-sliced loaves wrapped in plastic. Similar breads that are not mass-produced are usually called “sandwich bread” ( and they are only similar , because they are generally better quality than the mass-produced breads )
ETA Apparently Wonder and Chorleywood process bread are similar.
Little town I am from is half or a little more Italian, actually Sicilian. They came over in the 1800s, when apparently there was some sort of famine. I would run into the grannies out foraging [which is what I was doing, just for slightly different stuff] In chatting with them, they said they were looking for stuff for them and the grandfathers, food on the island was in very short supply unless you had a fair amount of money, so everybody forraged, and the men fished and hunted/poached small game. So, I learned roughly what they were going to be cooking and it didn’t seem anything like what their kids were feeding my generation [who got the spaghetti and meatballs, and the modern “Italian” stuff.] To this day, I still like greens with spring onions or chives sauteed up in olive oil and maybe a single slice of bacon slivered finely. I taught them how to catch chipmonks and squirrels and would trade them stuff for the rabbits they raised. Almost all the Italian families were related, all from the same town excep for a small selection of families that ended up here after WW2.
The Italians seem touchy about pizza surprises, no matter how tasty and well balanced.
Those bells haven’t rung in years.
What does it mean?
They’re going to hang someone!
This is true. Something about the milk being too filling/upsetting one’s digestion later in the day.
Also, coffees are small in Italy. They’re more like a shot of coffee than a cup. If you want a big cup of coffee you have to order caffè Americano or caffè lungo. A cappuccino will be a lot of foam with a little bit of coffee in the bottom.
Also? If you order a pizza in a restaurant, that pizza is for you. You don’t order one pizza for two (or more) people. Sharing a pizza is not a thing like it is here in the US.
Pineapple on pizza is an abomination (which I wholeheartedly agree with, but I hate pineapple anyway).
Your salad dressing is on the table in the form of a bottle of olive oil and a bottle of vinegar. There is no ‘what dressing do you want’ question.
Which I’ve been told over and over by Italian Italians is not a thing at all in Italy. Spaghetti is. Meatballs are. But serving them together isn’t. They often shudder at what we think of as Italian food. (As noted in this thread.) As said above, Italian-American developed from Southern Italian and Sicilian traditions and developed into its own regional cuisine (as I see it.) The white sauce Italian place you went to sounds like it centered on Northern Italian cuisine, which focuses more on butter and dairy dishes than olive oil and tomato. (Though not exclusively so. It does surprise me somewhat that nothing with a tomato sauce would be there.) I’ve found similar in Europe, that outside of Italy the menus are more Northern Italian focused than Southern or certainly Sicilian than what we get here in a typical red sauce joint here in America.
Italian of Sicilian?
To add to this, something was niggling in the back of my brain being an avid watcher of Pasta Grammar, and I remembered there was a type of spaghetti and meatball dish made with spaghetti alla chitarra and miniature meatballs that was native to Abruzzo, an area east of Rome bordering the Adriatic:
If you’re not familiar with that channel, it’s a good one. Eva – who is from Calabria herself – is very knowledgeable and passionate about regional Italian cuisine, but is open-minded enough (though with firm opinions) to not come across as just another stereotypical Italian on a culinary high horse (like they came down here to Chicago and were quite pleased with deep dish pizza a la Pequod’s, for instance). Paired with her affable American husband, Harper, they make a great team for an informative, historical, and entertaining Youtube channel.
Italian food is obviously delicious and one of the foundation world cuisines. People who take something seriously can be pretty dogmatic and doctrinaire about it, often based on their upbringing. And of course plenty of people enjoy explaining things and imposing rules on other people. One gets the impression that the fusion trend which has embiggened other great cuisines are less accepted in Italy or by Italians.
You can’t argue with results, making meals from simple quality ingredients, and Italy is one of the countries where home cooked meals are often better than restaurant versions. Still. sometimes breaking the rules improves things. Anchovies are often combined with cheese, no? Just don’t expect to convince or impress too many affectionados breaking the rules is better. Italian food is more regional than is sometimes credited and these rules vary from place to place. Using San Marzano tomatoes is always a good starting point, though.
Eric Ripert, a famous French chef was appalled when he came to the US and saw cheese added to a cake. Yet one is reminded of Ray Romano’s classic advice. “If you want a little more food, say you are full. Then bam, a little more. If you want a lot more food, say you want a little more. Then bam, a lot of food. If you don’t want any more, you’re gonna have to pull out a gun. I said back off, Mrs. Romano! Put the pasta down nice and slowly!”
True, but even the best Italian restaurants here have it on their menus. It seems almost obligatory for them to have it. I’ve been to two really good Italian restaurants within the last two weeks, Maggiano’s Little Italy in Oak Brook and Francesca’s in Palos. Despite all the great stuff on their menus, they both had good 'ole spaghetti and meatballs also.
They should simply call the dish spaghetti all’americana or something like that (or spaghetti con polpette yankee rotondissimi? – perhaps a bit over the top), probem solved. Give it a name and you can put in on the menu and Americans can order it.
It’s all crazy. You don’t see Americans making a bunch of food rules like that. Nobody would start complaining over minor issues like putting ketchup on hotdogs.
I’d expect spaghetti and meatballs there – those are both solid, mid-market chain Italian restaurants that tend more towards “red sauce” Italian food. (My wife loves Francesca’s). Plus in those areas you might see riots or at least mass confusion if something like spaghetti and meatballs wasn’t on an Italian restaurant menu (I spent half my free time as a teen in the Palos area and that stretch of the Southwest Suburbs). You wouldn’t have seen it at the sadly, dearly loved and departed Spiaggia (except maybe as a special order or fun special), or Piccolo Sogno, or Monteverde, or those kinds of more high-end specifically non Italian-American Italian places. So it will vary. Most of Chicago is red sauce Italian joints, so I would expect to see it at most places. It’s funny, because for me not seeing spaghetti and meatballs on the menu is a good sign. (I like red sauce Italian, but I like making that at home, so if I’m going out, I want something different.)
Or Pineapple on pizza.
I feel dirty just typing that.
Or chips on your sandwich. Which is a good thing BTW.
In fact, a panini with chips on it soulds pretty good for lunch today. And probably very offensive.
The thing is, there is this impression that the Italians are a bit more impassioned and didactic about it. As a Chicago, I can care less what you put on your hot dog (despite one of my first posts in 2001 being about it) and see the ketchup thing as more a schoolboy tease and nothing serious. Plenty of Chicagoans do put ketchup on their hot dogs and could give a damn what you think. Those are true Chicagoans. I’m sure some take it more seriously than others, but it feels like an order of magnitude or two less serious than a lot of the bickering I see about Italian food.
I disagree. These ‘rules’ attempt to impose stasis on things that came into existence as a result of a process of change. If I want to make an English dish that includes snails, I will, and you have no business telling me I shouldn’t. I AM English. I can invent new English food if I choose to*
IMO, the biggest problem with British food is that (largely without choice) it stopped incorporating new influences and ingredients and flavours; it was interrupted from continuing to do this by world events in the mid 20th century, and what came out of that was a fragmented notion of British cuisine:
- Traditional British cuisine - “Oh, it’s so boring and old fashioned!”
- Modern British cuisine - “Well, it’s not really British is it?”
Here’s the thing: Two out of the five famous French ‘Mother Sauces’ are inspired by, and named after, countries that are not France. Tomatoes and peppers feature prominently in Italian cooking, yet are not native to Italy (or Hungary, where they are also popular). Change, invention of new dishes, and incorporation of new, foreign ingredients, is a thing that every good cuisine in the world has always done.
*Now, it would be very presumptuous for me, an Englishman, to try to invent a new Italian or Scandinavian or Austrian or Hungarian dish. I could invent something that is inspired by those traditions, or inspired by a specific example of those traditions; it might even be so close to one of those dishes that I still need to call it by the original name, because you can be damn sure if I don’t, someone will complain that I didn’t credit the inspiration.
Yes! 
All cooking involves some rules, else we’d all just be turning out disgusting sludge. Food combinations and cooking methods create wonderful dishes, every cook follows some rules to ensure that happens, even if they don’t think about it. The italians have simply had a long time to perfect their rules. And let’s face it, they bloody work!
Experimentation is great, but as my university design professor told me, you have to know the rules to know how to break them effectively.
I don’t disagree, but neither is every Italian taking it that seriously. It is fair to say it’s more of a thing with Italian food though. We do have a more diverse food snobbery and pickiness here in the US, so you can do it wrong according to a Chicagoan or New Yorker but the rest of the country won’t care much. If somehow we would try to enforce every regional preference, well no point speculating, it would be impossible here. Just another thing that makes America great.