The Ugly Truth about Italian Food Abroad
You sit at that restaurants your friends recommended and you can’t wait to tuck in the real thing. Then with all that was perfect you leave the place with a bitter taste in your mouth but you don’t even know why.
As odd as it may sound, the truth is that food does not like to travel and gets homesick pretty soon.
Even in Italy one thing is to have swordfish in Sicily, another thing is to have it in Milan. It’ll taste delicious in Sicily - not so much in Milan. On the other hand polenta which is a thing of the North of Italy will never taste as good when made in the South of Italy. In a nutshell, food loves the land it comes from.
Unlike many people food does not like to travel
The ugly truth about Italian food is that there are no shortcuts for those who try to replicate the real thing abroad.
The matter is serious and it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Consider this - three elements contribute to the making of authentic, uncorrupted Italian food.
The craft of the chef
Traditions - in the form of recipes
Ingredients.
Italian restaurants that want to serve real Italian food must apply all of these three elements.
It’s easy enough to find a born-and-bred Italian chef, or have them pass their skills over to non-Italian ones. Likewise, it is fairly easy to learn the real recipes to make Italian food.
The trouble is finding and using unadulterated, Italian ingredients when your restaurant is thousands and thousands miles away from Italy.
Only a few restaurants are willing to jump through the loopholes to put a piece of genuine Italian food on your plate. These restaurants do the only thing you’d expect of them - they have their ingredients directly shipped from Italy.
When you eat their dishes, your taste buds tell you that it is the real thing. And you know that taste buds never lie.
Other restaurants don’t seem to go the distance - perhaps they can’t afford to provide you with genuine, Italian ingredients or fail to apply one of the other two elements above.
