Too frequently to be a coincidence. What’s going on?
I assume Iti=Italian? Maybe you just don’t like Italian food?
Gremlins. And shite OPs.
No, I enjoy it when it’s well prepared, but it can’t be mere coincidence that the pizzas are uniformly good whereas a lot of the other dishes are disappointing. As well as being difficult to locate on the plate.
I think this is an IMHO and has no factual answer.
Plus it seems kind of offensive.
Must be a Hong Kong issue. I know several extraordinary Italian restaurants in metro Detroit and metro Cleveland (and used to know a good one in Indianapolis) and I would never order pizza at any of them.
Maybe it’s because you’re in Hong Kong, home of the mediocre Italian meal?
I hate to break it to you, but it’s the other way around.
Nobody makes decent pizza anymore. I’ve given up eating it, both in a restaurant and delivery.
But there are plenty of wonderful places for spaghetti, linguini, penne, gniocchi, chicken or veal parmesan.
Heck, even Frizolli’s, the fast food italian place, has excellent food.
Now I’m hungry for italian food…
It may be because you live in Hong Kong, Roger. Italian food here is pretty damn bad, in my experience.
The pizza’s not so great either, come to think of it.
What was the point in writing “Iti” instead of “Italian”? Did you actually think very many of us would know that slang term? Did you actually think you saved a significant portion of time in writing “Iti” instead of “Italian”?
I’ve seen “iti” more often as “eye-tie” or some similar spelling. It’s a Briticism that never really took hold in the U.S. But I always thought of it as a pejorative. I wouldn’t use it casually any more than I would “wop.”
What do the British contingent here think?
And I’m beginning to appreciate Italian food more now that several good Italian restaurants have opened up going way past pasta meals. I had Chilean sea bass with greens and beans accompanied by baked ziti recently and it was terrific.
Pizza is to Italian food what hamburger is to American food.
Perhaps “Iti” is a regional variation for the slang (and slightly offensive) version that I’ve always seen written as “Eyetie”, namely, Italian.
It was used in “Breaking Away,” set in Bloomington, Indiana. I always thought it was just a quirk of the main character’s father though.
It seems I’ve opened a right old can of whole peeled Italian tomatoes with this one. Just to clear up the title, my original didn’t fit so I made a few cuts, including abbreviating Italian to Iti. I sincerely apologise to any Italians who may be reading this thread, and would ask a moderator to adjust it accordingly.
I’ve eaten in a great many Italian restaurants in the US, and had lasagna, ziti, rigitoni, fettuccini, stromboli, and calzones which were all excellent. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever had non-pizza Italian food that was worse than many chain pizzas (which are still pretty good, anyway).
Around here (So Cal), good Italian is easy to come by. There are a couple places even here in Pasadena that are good, particularly if you’re willing to do hole-in-the-wall, off-the-beaten-track. And if you avoid the chains, good pizza is easy to come by as well. (My boss is in Chicago this week, and that’s made me remember how good deep dish is.) I think that you’re lucky if you have good pizza and cruddy Italian food, because pizza’s harder to make at home.
These google advertisements are incredible. A combo of my “Hong Kong” location and “pizza” has brought me to pizzakingdom.com., a fusion restaurant, to boot! Lucky indeed!!
Incidentally, it’s not just the Italian restaurants in Hong Kong. The ones in Macau are shite as well. Maybe it’s like the Chinese takeaways in England. As my friend, whose mum and dad ran one there for 30 years before retiring to HK with the mint they’d made, alwways lieks to remind me, Brits wouldn’t know decent Chinese food if it jumped up and bit them. (Some of it might, come to think of it, if you don’t skewer it properly before putting it in the hot pot.) Same with the local clientele and Italian food, very probably.
I’ve always found Macau to be pretty shite in general; if you don’t gamble, what’s the point?
Fernando’s is nice, though.
It’s not a bad place to visit en famille of a weekend. Best new restaurant I’ve unearthed recently is La Bonne Heure, a French restaurant with a Japanese chef. Near the centre of town, just off the main square. For another Fernando-esque restaurant (I’ve only been there once and that was 15 years or so ago), you might want to try A Petisqueira (sp?) on Taipa, if you haven’t already done so. Cheap and cheerful.
I like Macau, and I don’t gamble. It seems a lot more low-key and charming than Hong Kong. My mom (born and raised in HK) was enchanted with it–she visited for the first time a couple of years back, and said it was like stepping into a time machine and visiting Hong Kong in the 1950s again. I loved the Portuguese-influenced food there too. Po taat, mmm.
Visiting the casinos was a trip, even for a non-gambler. I liked the signs requesting the clientele not to wear undershirts to the casino or spit on the floor.