While I understand the spirit of Italian cooking draws upon improvisation, there is also a good argument for the great classic dishes that are rarely seen in these parts in their pure form. Ingredients matter. The season matters. The place where one lives matters. But sometimes lines are crossed, and from where I observe, we’ve crossed over into the land of contravention. They’ve stolen our dreadlocks. Italian food has been culturally appropriated. And it’s an unsightly mess.
And I’m just talking about the food. Don’t even get me started on Italian wine lists. The last one I viewed had Italian red wines listed under international reds. Under the domestic reds, they proudly displayed the The Prisoner Red Blend, Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon and Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon – the ubiquitous triumvirate of American winemaking prowess and excellence – Gold medal champions!
I’ve been fortunate to spend lots of time in Italy for work and for pleasure, having been everywhere (except Sardegna, which is still on my list). I’ve eaten in Puglia, Sicily, Calabria, Basilicata. I’ve had proper pizza in Naples, not some of the erectile dysfunctioning stuff they pawn off on the locals in my town. I’ve eaten good and bad in Rome, Milan and Venice. I’ve supped in Valtellina and Valle D’Aoste. Done the rounds in Marche, Abruzzo, Friuli, Emilia-Romagna. Been subjected to Tuscan cuisine, often surprisingly delightful. Sometimes, not so much. All this to say, I’ve been exposed to Italian food. I’ve worked in Italian restaurants, made wine lists for them, served in them, managed them. Talk to the local diners. And do you know what? They’re farther ahead in their personal evolution than most restaurateurs in town give them credit for. And that’s after one must navigate the labyrinthine restaurant puzzle, the often-indifferent host (or hostess) gatekeepers and the ubiquitous valet parkers (even though the parking lots are often sprawling and steps away from the restaurant). All this for a simple plate of pasta? If it were that simple.
No, instead they ply us with their inner-orb cabal of culinary conceits.
Weve been overrun with Calabrian chili, Calabrian chili oil and Nduja, although if you were to ask the chefs if they have ever been to Calabria, they might not have ever been there. We've been invaded with confit, foie gras and tzatziki, anything "a la Française", kale and shishito peppers, panko breadcrumbs, white truffle oil (still?) and highly wrought burrata. We've been subjected to under-cooked (and underwhelming) pizza, which is more of a slam against the American (or Greek) roots of the dish than Italian, although the diehard Neapolitan pizza worshippers will fight to the death to proffer their sagging facsimiles. We’ve been overexposed to garlic, octopus and anything "lollipop." We've been whipped with ricotta (no, not northern, possibly Sicilian or likely Greek in origin), confit-ted with duck and balsamic drunken figs, had our pristine melon and prosciutto subjugated with improvements by the addition of basil, candied hazelnuts and rose balsamic. I'm exhausted reading the menus and my stomach has been shredded beyond belief. I just crave a simple pasta from Sicily, a restrained risotto from Piedmont, a simply grilled fish from the Adriatic, some normal gelato, an espresso that doesn't cost $5 (and might be hopefully drinkable), and last but not least, a place where they honor the cultivation of La Cucina Italiana.
And while I’m at it, this calling of Italian food “Northern Italian,” while serving food right out of the Southern Italian playbook (ergo Italian-American) is so ‘80’s. And vacationers come back from the Amalfi Coast or Sicily and wonder why the food back in Italy was so much more memorable? They’ve said that about the wine for ages. Now, people are going to Palermo and Ischia and coming back with memories that they will rarely be able to replicate unless they go back there. Which is preferable to this hodge-podge of modified cultural comestible chimeras.
And it seems what’s lurking on the horizon doesn’t bode well for finding that holy grail of Italian food here in my region. One chef-consultant recently did a dinner (at $250 a head!), billed as a polenta table, where it was reported that the chef poured the polenta directly onto a fabric tablecloth (red-checkered of course, to persist with the cliché). Did you just feel that? It was my dearly departed Calabrese grandmother just causing the latest earthquake in North Texas.
She raised five kids during a depression by herself, in a strange land (Dallas) alone, and was poor. They ate polenta (not just the northerners eat polenta, people) but to put it on a tablecloth? My grandmother’s tablecloth was linen, possibly made by herself (she was a seamstress) and to dump polenta and tomato sauce and the fat of meat (which she didn’t do - couldn’t afford meat- but the so-called chef-consultant did!) is an impossible cultural anomaly. The amount of time she would have had to take to clean the damn tablecloth just wasn’t available to her - she was too busy keeping her kids fed and a roof over their heads.
If you go to places like Umbria (which, again, is not northern Italy folks – it’s central) you can be served polenta on a wooden paddle or plank. I experienced that in 1977, so it is a thing. But we also drank Italian wines (obviously). But here in glitzy North Texas, the organizers of the polenta table dinner brought out one of the big guns from Napa (from the earlier mentioned ubiquitous triumvirate). Eww, just eww, what a cultural abomination.
And in other news, another, and latest, export just dropped in who will make Dallas a safer place for Italian food – go to their Instagram page – no, it’s not an Only Fans page, it just looks like one. Again, be prepared for another round of cultural appropriation. This time, they didn’t just steal my dreadlocks, they’re flaunting our war bonnets too. This is the end of the world as we know it. Beam me up, Lord, time to surrender and drink some natural wine from Cana. Help me, Jesus!
