Italian Food that Isn't ?--- They Don't Know About it in Italy !
The ANNOTICO Report

I was disappointed for a Millisecond that some of my favorite Italian dishes are NOT !

However, I am going to continue to enjoy with gusto, "veal parmigiana", "chicken parmigiana",  "chicken marsala",  "pepperoni pizza", (or practically all pizza embellishments),"shrimp scampi", "fettuccine Alfredo", "spaghetti and meatballs",
even though this writer claims they are all an American-Italian creation.

And what is this confusion in both Italy and the US about "coffee", "expresso", "caffé", "real Italian coffee, very short, like in Italy.","caffé americano" or "Nescafe"?

PENNE FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
Italian food? Fuhgedaboudit.

The New Haven Advocate
by Robin
December 23, 2004

There is no such thing as espresso in Italy. Well, that's not strictly true. Most Italian barmen will know what you mean if you ask for an "espresso"--especially in tourist traps like Venice, Florence, and Positano, where they might even employ the word voluntarily when talking to tourists--but among themselves, they call it caffé. The Italian caffé is almost unrelated to the American espresso, except perhaps for the basic mechanics of the process--water is forced through finely ground beans, usually by steam pressure, and usually with a big, gleaming machine that's Italian-made.

In New Haven, just as in the rest of America, restaurants and coffeeshops don't know how to use the machine. Even when we import fancy Italian beans, we produce a dark brown, watery brew that's bitter and insipid, in a quantity that fills a demi-tasse.

The caffé that these machines were designed to produce is a rich, black, and wonderfully syrupy coffee, never filling more than half of the demi-tasse, and topped by a thick layer of light-brown crema that emerges when the water is pushed through the grounds at the proper level of pressure. The attention to detail--the grinding, the measuring, the tamping--elevates the process to art, a sanctity most striking when it manifests in the most unlikely places--trains, movie theaters, gas stations.

You can't get an Italian coffee at any of New Haven's Italian restaurants. The only two places where I have ever tried anything resembling it are at Romeo & Cesare's on Orange Street, which isn't even a restaurant, and at the newly opened Caffé Bottega.

Even at these places, it helps to inform the staff that you want a "real Italian coffee, very short, like in Italy." Bottega, for one, is staffed by a group of attractive young Neapolitans who haven't learned that most Americans don't like Italian coffee.

Back in Italy, while some American tourists become addicted to the real thing, others discover that they can instead order caffé americano, wherein the Italians attempt to approximate the taste of drip coffee by diluting the coffee with hot water.

Coffee is the least of your Italian-ordering worries. Many of us have learned what we know about Italian food from Italian restaurants in America that specialize in red-sauce dishes. These places are legion in New Haven. Now, I do like a good veal parmigiana. But there's no such thing as veal parmigiana in Italy. Ask an Italian about a preparation of fried cutlets of veal with tomato sauce and cheese, and she won't have any idea what you're talking about--unless she's been to New Haven.

Chicken parmigiana is also an American invention. So is "chicken marsala" and its relatives. Chicken is served one of two ways in Italy--roasted whole, or pounded, breaded, and fried.

There's also no such thing as spaghetti and meatballs in Italy. Meatballs are only served, if ever, as a second course by themselves, or breaded and fried as a bar snack. And there's no such thing as pepperoni pizza. Peperoni actually means "peppers" in Italian, a fact that leaves scores of first-time tourists in Italy hilariously befuddled. The Italians don't really have anything similar to what we call pepperoni; they do have salami (salame), but only the spicy Calabrian version would ever be put onto a pizza.

They do, however, have pizza with a fried egg and pizza with gorgonzola and speck (a cured meat similar to bacon). But on a given night, the vast majority of Italians glaze over all the combination options and order the best pizza of all--the margherita (mozzarella, tomato, and perhaps a couple sprigs of basil). It's only served in a personal size, and its crust is much thinner than ours.

The list goes on, though. "Shrimp scampi" is a pretty funny one, because not only does the dish not exist in Italy, "scampi" actually means another type of shellfish. It's a deliciously sweet crustacean that thrives in the Adriatic. Along the Italian coastline, it is a pricey delicacy. I only wish that you could actually get scampi at restaurants in America.

There's no such thing as fettuccine Alfredo, either. In fact, in the entire country of Italy, there is only one restaurant that serves it. It's a touristy restaurant in Rome called Alfredo's, and it has two other branches: one in Rockefeller Center, and one in the Italy Pavilion at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center.

Brunch is becoming an increasingly popular Sunday activity in Italy's more cosmopolitan urban centers, and one Sunday last year in Rome, an Italian friend of mine and fellow foodie, Giuliano, took me to a brunch place that he had told me I "had to see for myself." The two-floor joint was trendy--high ceilings, exposed beams and pipes, open kitchen--and we had to wait for a while to be seated.

Along one wall of the restaurant's ground floor was a buffet of Italian imitations of archetypal American dishes--eggs and bacon, pancakes, bagels and cream cheese, macaroni and cheese.

And at each table was a little box full of packets of Nescafé.

Shortly after we had finally been seated, a waiter walked over to us with a shiny silver pitcher in his hand and a couple of big white mugs. It was full of hot water. "Nescafé?" he asked. I looked around the restaurant. At tables everywhere, diners were sitting over their brunch, casually sipping from their mugs. A few were emptying packets of powdered coffee into their mugs after their own waiters had poured the water.

In the coffee mecca of the modern world, within walking distance from the Pantheon and endlessly famous coffee bars like Tazza d'Oro and Caffé Sant'Eustachio, the hippest of the Romans were drinking Nescafé.

I had entered the Roman twilight zone.

I looked over at Giuliano, and he had this mischievous, childish grin on his face. Clearly, this was why he had brought me here.

"We don't even drink Nescafé much in America," I said.

"Really?" said Giuliano, genuinely surprised.

"No," I said. "We drink espresso."

New Haven Advocate: Penne For Your Thoughts
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