A Report from the “Old Country”
To my family and friends in New York who “think” they are Italian:
I love you. I really do. But we need to talk.
Many of you have spent your entire lives explaining Italy to everyone around you. You know how Italians eat, how Italians talk, how Italians raise their children, and how everything is done better in the “old country.”
The fact that your last relative actually born in Italy arrived at Ellis Island in 1911 has never slowed you down.
You grew up in New York. You drink Dunkin’ coffee, buy your mozzarella at Wegmans, and have a cousin named Vinny—and somehow this qualifies you as an international authority on Italian culture.
Now, I am only half Italian. My mother was Swedish, and I am as proud of my Viking roots as I am of my Italian heritage. Half of me wants to sit around a table for three hours eating pasta and arguing loudly. The other half wants to build a boat, invade England, and avoid unnecessary conversation.
It is a delicate balance.
What makes my situation a little different is that I actually live and work in Italy. I own a home here. Actually, I own two homes—one where we live and another that we keep as an income property. That last sentence alone should qualify me for Italian citizenship because nothing makes you understand Italy quite like owning property and trying to get paperwork approved.
I live in Ladispoli, outside Rome, about 90 minutes from the town where my Italian family came from. I am in touch with my cousins there every week. We often meet for dinner, or maybe just for an aperitivo if they are in Rome.
So, with great affection, I would like to answer some questions and correct a few of the assumptions my New York Italian friends have about life in the “old country.”
No, we do not eat pasta at every meal.
Yes, the pasta is better.
No, not everyone is in the Mafia.
And no, the Mafia does not run my town.
At least, not that I know of. I have learned that in Italy it is sometimes best not to ask too many follow-up questions.
A while ago, I was telling some American friends about a small car accident I had here. Nothing serious—just a fender bender. My cousin, who is one of those people who seems to know everyone, showed up and helped me handle the situation.
Immediately, one of my American friends leaned in and said, “Yeah, I bet he set things right. Is he mobbed up?”
No.
He is not “mobbed up.”
He helped me fill out an accident report.
There was no threat. No envelope of cash. No horse’s head. He had a pen, knew which boxes to check, and understood where to file the form. In Italy, that is far more powerful than knowing someone in the Mafia.
The problem is that many of my New York Italian friends grew up watching The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos. They have somehow convinced themselves that there is something noble and romantic about organized crime.
They lower their voices when talking about an uncle who “knows some people.”
He doesn’t know people. He has a friend at the DMV.
They want you to think they are connected, when in reality they work as a custodian at an elementary school and occasionally get free cannoli from a guy whose furnace they helped fix.
Here in Italy, nobody walks around pretending to be in the Mafia. That is largely an Italian-American hobby.
Now, Let’s Talk About the Food
This is where my New York Italian friends become especially dangerous.
They will proudly tell an actual Italian, “You haven’t had real Italian food until you’ve eaten at my grandmother’s house in Utica.”
This is a bold statement to make to someone who is currently in a kitchen in Italy making lunch.
Italian-American food is good. Some of it is great. It came from immigrant families who arrived in America, used the ingredients they could find, adapted old recipes, and created something new. It deserves to be celebrated.
But it is not the same as Italian food.
Italian food and Italian-American food are related in the same way that American football and rugby are related. You can see how one led to the other, but if you show up in Rome wearing shoulder pads, people are going to have questions.
The differences begin before anyone even turns on the stove.
One of the first things Americans notice when they visit my house in Ladispoli is that my kitchen is small and pretty basic.
They look around with concern. “Where is the rest of it?”
There is no rest of it.
My refrigerator is appropriately apartment-sized. There is not much storage, no walk-in pantry, and no second freezer in the garage holding enough meat to survive a six-month siege.
Why? Because people here shop differently.
In Italy, we are daily—or every-other-day—shoppers. We buy what is fresh and cook it that day or the next. We are buying dinner, not preparing for the collapse of civilization.
The market is not one enormous building the size of an aircraft hangar, with 37 varieties of ranch dressing and an entire aisle devoted to breakfast cereal. Here in Ladispoli, the market is a row of local vendors bringing in their vegetables. It is the fisherman selling the fish that arrived that morning. It is the butcher cutting the meat in front of you instead of handing you a Styrofoam tray containing something sealed three states away.
It is the baker who will happily sell you half a loaf of bread. Half a loaf!
In America, asking for half a loaf would probably require a manager, a special form, and an explanation of your personal circumstances. Here, it makes perfect sense because the bread is meant to be eaten today or tomorrow. It does not contain enough preservatives to remain soft through three presidential administrations.
Italian bread has a refreshingly honest relationship with mortality. It is wonderful today, acceptable tomorrow, and by the third day it can be used to defend your home.
Of course we have supermarkets. Of course we go to them. I am not walking through Ladispoli with a wicker basket while a mandolin plays in the background.
But even a trip to the supermarket is usually a quick stop for what we need now—not an expedition requiring a detailed list, an oversized cart, and strategic coordination with other members of the family.
Americans “stock up.”
We buy 48 rolls of toilet paper, three gallons of milk, enough frozen chicken for a restaurant, and a jar of mayonnaise large enough to be listed as a dependent on our taxes.
Then we push two completely full shopping carts toward the car and congratulate ourselves for saving twelve dollars.
In Italy, I buy some tomatoes, fresh fish, cheese, vegetables, and bread. Then I go home and cook them.
The next day, I do something absolutely radical:
I go outside again.
The smaller kitchen is not a limitation. It reflects an entirely different approach to food. Fresh ingredients come into the house, become a meal, and are eaten. Food does not disappear into the back of a giant refrigerator until someone discovers it six weeks later and asks, “What was this?”
This is one reason Italian cooking tastes different. It begins at the market, with ingredients chosen for tonight’s dinner—not because they were on sale in a twelve-pack and might still be edible next February.
We are feeding the family.
We are not stocking a bunker.
Then We Start Cooking
Italian cooking tends to be simple: a few fresh ingredients, good olive oil, pasta cooked properly, and nothing trying too hard.
Italian-American cooking looked at that and said, “This is nice—but what if we added six pounds of cheese?”
Then someone else said, “Good idea. Now bread it, fry it, cover it with sauce, add more cheese, and serve it beside a pile of pasta large enough to feed a small village.”
That is how chicken parmigiana was born.
Chicken parmigiana, by the way, is not really an Italian dish. Italians make parmigiana di melanzane with eggplant. They also make different kinds of breaded cutlets. Italian-Americans looked at both and said, “Why are we choosing?”
That is the entrepreneurial spirit that built America.
The same is true of spaghetti and meatballs.
Italians eat pasta. Italians eat meatballs. But they generally do not place three meatballs the size of softballs on top of a mountain of spaghetti and call it a light Tuesday dinner.
In Italy, pasta is usually a primo—a first course. Meat comes later as a secondo. Italians like their courses to have boundaries.
Italian-Americans believe boundaries are a sign of weakness.
Everything goes on one plate: pasta, meatballs, sausage, braciole, garlic bread, salad, and enough red sauce to repaint the kitchen.
Then someone’s grandmother asks why you are not eating.
“I’ve already had three plates.”
“You don’t like my cooking?”
This is not a question. It is an accusation.
Then there is garlic.
Italians use garlic. Of course they do. But they do not use it in every dish, and they generally do not use enough to repel vampires across three counties.
Italian-American garlic bread is half a loaf of bread soaked in butter, covered in garlic powder, wrapped in aluminum foil, and baked until it becomes both an appetizer and a defensive weapon.
It is delicious.
It is also not something you are likely to find on the table in Italy.
Alfredo sauce is another area of international confusion. The original Roman dish is basically pasta, butter, Parmigiano, and technique. The American version is butter, heavy cream, cheese, more cheese, garlic, chicken, broccoli, and perhaps a cardiologist standing nearby.
Then there is carbonara.
Real carbonara is made with eggs, Pecorino Romano, guanciale, black pepper, and pasta.
No cream.
I repeat: no cream.
Every time an American adds cream to carbonara, somewhere in Rome an Italian grandmother suddenly becomes angry and does not know why.
And please stop putting peas in it.
The portions are also different. In Italy, you eat pasta and feel satisfied. In an Italian-American restaurant, the server brings out a bowl of pasta that could double as a baptismal font.
You eat half, take the rest home in a container, and have enough food for lunch, dinner, and possibly a small wedding.
Even pizza is different.
Italian pizza is thin, simple, and made for one person. You might have tomato, mozzarella, basil, and a little olive oil.
New York pizza is folded in half and eaten while walking down the street at a speed that suggests someone is chasing you.
Both are excellent. They are simply different species.
And cappuccino?
In Italy, cappuccino is generally a morning drink. After lunch, people order espresso.
My American friends will order a cappuccino after a large seafood dinner at 10:30 at night and then explain to the waiter that their family is from Naples.
The waiter will smile politely.
That smile does not mean what you think it means.
And then we arrive at the most dangerous subject of all:
Sunday gravy.
Some Italian-American families call it gravy. Others call it sauce. In Italy, it might be sugo or ragù, depending on what it is and where you are.
I am not taking a side in the gravy-versus-sauce war. I am nearly 60 years old. I have survived gymnastics, international travel, business ownership, Italian bureaucracy, and local politics. I am not stupid enough to get between two New York Italians arguing about what to call cooked tomatoes.
I would rather negotiate with the Vikings.
The Other Stereotypes
Some of the stereotypes about Italy are true.
Italians have brought bureaucracy to an art form. In America, you fill out a form to accomplish something. In Italy, you fill out a form to receive permission to request the form you actually need.
That form must then be stamped by someone who works only on alternate Tuesdays between 10:15 and 11:00—and who is currently on vacation.
Eventually, you learn to accept this.
You bring a book. You get a coffee. You wait. You return the next day with three additional documents, two passport photos, your birth certificate, and possibly a letter from the Pope.
No, the trains do not always run on time.
Today there was a strike, and I had to take my car. Strikes are also something of an Italian art form. They are usually announced in advance, occur during very specific hours, and somehow everyone knows about them except the person standing on the platform waiting for a train.
But yes, when they are running, the trains are incredibly convenient. I can get into Rome without driving, parking, or inventing new Italian curse words in traffic.
Yes, the wine is great.
Yes, the food is better.
But it is not better because every meal is fancy. Most of it isn’t. It is better because the ingredients are fresh, the recipes are regional, and people understand that sometimes the best thing you can do with good food is leave it alone.
Italy is wonderful, but it is not a theme park filled with grandmothers making pasta, handsome men riding Vespas, and distant cousins waiting to welcome every American named Anthony home.
It is a real place. It has traffic, taxes, strikes, frustrating paperwork, bad drivers, and people who stop directly in the middle of the sidewalk to have a 20-minute conversation.
But it also has long dinners, beautiful towns, great wine, strong families, incredible history, and sunsets that make an entire town stop what it is doing and look toward the sea.
Life here is not perfect.
It is simply Italian.
So, to my family and friends back in New York: Be proud of your heritage. Talk with your hands. Eat too much on Sundays. Tell everyone your grandmother made the best meatballs in Brooklyn.
Just remember that watching The Godfather twenty times does not make you Italian.
Knowing a guy named Paulie does not mean you are connected.
And putting mozzarella on something does not automatically make it Italian.
Unless Paulie works in the local municipal office and can get your paperwork stamped.
Then stay very close to Paulie.
That guy has real power.
VACILANDO 