While finishing an excellent dinner at the trattoria Scannabue in Turin’s San Salvario neighborhood at the very start of the trip to Italy last month, we audibly noticed a dish just brought to the table next to us. The two diners at it, who had been speaking only in Italian, happen to respond in excellent English, one currently living in Seattle.
Friends originally from Bologna, after some talk about the dishes on the table, wine and the restaurant, we learned that they had once run a website that recommended restaurants throughout Italy as both traveled to much of Italy for work and vacation but eventually felt they could not compete with better-funded sites and publications like from Gambero Rosso. Hearing that led to more questions from me about which regional and local cuisines in Italy they thought were in the best.
The relative merits of regional and local cuisines in Italy is a topic of interest to many, myself definitely included. Italian geography and history – along with a climate suited to many wonderful fruits, vegetables, grains and wines – has given the country numerous distinct and often thrilling dishes and culinary traditions. Many of these have found homes in the U.S. As Italy has become wealthier after the Second World War, more people can fully partake in those, expanding old traditions while new ones have also arisen. And restaurants in Italy are better than ever.
Being from Bologna, the two thought Bolognese cuisine was the best, of course. That food exemplified by a richness featuring fresh pasta like tortellini and ragù Bolognese, and lasagna and foodstuffs like prosciutto, mortadella and Parmigian-Reggiano is often the top choice of many Italians I’ve queried over the years, but which would assuredly be after their hometown cooking wherever that was. The also-rich Piedmontese cuisine, known best for the luxurious aromatic white truffles each fall, was likely second, and that Turin was a great city in which to dine. They agreed with me that Tuscan was surely overrated and less interesting, though it does have Italy’s only culture of steak; Marchigiano from across the Apennines is certainly better, as the Marche is actually more beautiful, too. And they quickly dismissed the Milanese cooking: “It only has two dishes.” Two dishes? I asked. There is costoletta, osso buco and risotto alla Milanese, to start. “Costoletta and rice with the sauce of the osso buco, that’s just two.” Maybe they passionately hated both AC and Inter Milan.
That was humorous, and typical of still-current Italian regional and local chauvinism. But he might have had somewhat of a point about Milan. Noted Italian cookbook author Ada Boni wrote, even in the 1960s, that “Good Milanese cooking is rare in the city itself, but in the old part of the city and in certain trattoria in the outer suburbs it may still be found by the enterprising and inquisitive gastronome.” And the city has certainly changed in the intervening six decades while it has drawn more people from elsewhere in Italy elsewhere.
I feel the need to dine some more in Milan. And elsewhere in much of Italy, for that matter. I have to Sicily and the Sicilian cooking, with access to large fish like tuna and swordfish and other seafood is regarded to be among the healthiest in Italy along with being very flavorful. Roman cooking has given the world, and tourist Italy, the famed pasta dishes cacio e pepe, all ‘Amatriciana and Carbonara. And a fourth, that they don’t’ publicize anymore, Alfredo. There is also carcioli all romana and carciofa all giudi pinzimonio, abbacchio, suckling lamb, porchetta, saltimbocca and pizza al taglio and a trattoria tradition for robust than elsewhere. Neapolitan, often quickly cooked excepting its famed Sunday ragù, has given much to the Italian-American fare I grew up with is probably my favorite though I have spent less than a week in the Naples area. Pizza, spaghetti, and marinara, octopus, mussels, clams, squid often topping that pasta. Mozzarella. Eggplant Parmesan. Among some of the others, Venetian, with its fruits of the Lagoon, robust, delicious Abbruzzese, and lighter Ligurian, with its olive oil-laden pesto, focaccia and dishes with small fish.
It’s a fun subject to muse about the regional and local Italian cooking, as we did for a little while with some strangers who were quite passionate about it. I have since thought what should be included when talking about cuisines. The dishes, the foodstuffs, maybe the wine, too, and likely the quality of the restaurants, which is where nearly all of us experience the cuisines.
More research is needed, even if the question doesn’t really need to be answered. Just explored.
Friends originally from Bologna, after some talk about the dishes on the table, wine and the restaurant, we learned that they had once run a website that recommended restaurants throughout Italy as both traveled to much of Italy for work and vacation but eventually felt they could not compete with better-funded sites and publications like from Gambero Rosso. Hearing that led to more questions from me about which regional and local cuisines in Italy they thought were in the best.
The relative merits of regional and local cuisines in Italy is a topic of interest to many, myself definitely included. Italian geography and history – along with a climate suited to many wonderful fruits, vegetables, grains and wines – has given the country numerous distinct and often thrilling dishes and culinary traditions. Many of these have found homes in the U.S. As Italy has become wealthier after the Second World War, more people can fully partake in those, expanding old traditions while new ones have also arisen. And restaurants in Italy are better than ever.
Being from Bologna, the two thought Bolognese cuisine was the best, of course. That food exemplified by a richness featuring fresh pasta like tortellini and ragù Bolognese, and lasagna and foodstuffs like prosciutto, mortadella and Parmigian-Reggiano is often the top choice of many Italians I’ve queried over the years, but which would assuredly be after their hometown cooking wherever that was. The also-rich Piedmontese cuisine, known best for the luxurious aromatic white truffles each fall, was likely second, and that Turin was a great city in which to dine. They agreed with me that Tuscan was surely overrated and less interesting, though it does have Italy’s only culture of steak; Marchigiano from across the Apennines is certainly better, as the Marche is actually more beautiful, too. And they quickly dismissed the Milanese cooking: “It only has two dishes.” Two dishes? I asked. There is costoletta, osso buco and risotto alla Milanese, to start. “Costoletta and rice with the sauce of the osso buco, that’s just two.” Maybe they passionately hated both AC and Inter Milan.
That was humorous, and typical of still-current Italian regional and local chauvinism. But he might have had somewhat of a point about Milan. Noted Italian cookbook author Ada Boni wrote, even in the 1960s, that “Good Milanese cooking is rare in the city itself, but in the old part of the city and in certain trattoria in the outer suburbs it may still be found by the enterprising and inquisitive gastronome.” And the city has certainly changed in the intervening six decades while it has drawn more people from elsewhere in Italy elsewhere.
I feel the need to dine some more in Milan. And elsewhere in much of Italy, for that matter. I have to Sicily and the Sicilian cooking, with access to large fish like tuna and swordfish and other seafood is regarded to be among the healthiest in Italy along with being very flavorful. Roman cooking has given the world, and tourist Italy, the famed pasta dishes cacio e pepe, all ‘Amatriciana and Carbonara. And a fourth, that they don’t’ publicize anymore, Alfredo. There is also carcioli all romana and carciofa all giudi pinzimonio, abbacchio, suckling lamb, porchetta, saltimbocca and pizza al taglio and a trattoria tradition for robust than elsewhere. Neapolitan, often quickly cooked excepting its famed Sunday ragù, has given much to the Italian-American fare I grew up with is probably my favorite though I have spent less than a week in the Naples area. Pizza, spaghetti, and marinara, octopus, mussels, clams, squid often topping that pasta. Mozzarella. Eggplant Parmesan. Among some of the others, Venetian, with its fruits of the Lagoon, robust, delicious Abbruzzese, and lighter Ligurian, with its olive oil-laden pesto, focaccia and dishes with small fish.
It’s a fun subject to muse about the regional and local Italian cooking, as we did for a little while with some strangers who were quite passionate about it. I have since thought what should be included when talking about cuisines. The dishes, the foodstuffs, maybe the wine, too, and likely the quality of the restaurants, which is where nearly all of us experience the cuisines.
More research is needed, even if the question doesn’t really need to be answered. Just explored.
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