Why is the food so much better in Italy?
 

Just got back from four days in Rome and am working on a trip report, but in the meantime, I am wondering, why is the food so much better in Italy? In particular, I think pizza in the states is ruined for me after having the wonderful pizza in Rome. Also, pasta - is it possible to replicate the pasta dishes?
Is it just the freshness of the ingredients or is it something more?

I found the food disappointing in Italy. Perhaps my standards were too high.

Regretfully, I've settle back to enjoying a good Pizza Hut pizza.

Jules

one of the reasons is no perservatives over there in the food, I think. But the pizza in Italy is nothing special, personal feeling on that. Guess it depends where you live. But give me a good NYC pizza over anything in Italy.

Italy has the best tomato's. No perservatives equal fresh.

Victoria-
I absolutely agree with you about the food - and the wine - in Italy! I also felt that I could never enjoy pizza in the US again, but, sadly, have fallen back into bad habits.

I think it is the freshness of the ingredients. But I was speaking to a friend about the cheese being so good in Italy and she suggested that maybe it was whole-milk instead of the skim-milk ricotta, etc. that is usually found in the market.

So, I went to my neighborhood Italian market and purchased whole-milk ricotta and mozarella and my husband said the resulting lasagna was the best he had ever tasted! Of course, he did not go to Italy with me, but it did taste better than usual.

So, fresher ingredients, whole-milk cheese and throw in Italian ambience and there you have it!

Please do write a trip report. I look forward to sharing the memories of your trip with you.

Ciao!
Linda

>>>"Regretfully, I've settle back to enjoying a good Pizza Hut pizza. "

Isn't that a contradiction in terms? Using "good" and that establishment's product in the same sentence may be considered blasphemy.

MvK

Hi

Or maybe food and wine tastes better because of the atmosphere? Your in the beautiful city or Rome, on vacation, it is warm etc...maybe it is just the setting the make the food taste better. But I agree...I did enjoy most of the food we had in Rome :d

Regards
Gard
http://gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures

Tomatoes are better, pasta is better, pizza is better etc. Less preservatives, more care in cooking the food. Different soil and water makes a difference. Not everyone prefers the food in Italy obviously but a good majority of people visiting Italy do Victoria, and I am certainly one of them. I look forward to your trip report, you will have to tell us some of your favorite dishes in Italy.

On a more serious note (just had to jab at that "good" pizza reference), I found the food in Europe to be outstanding in every place I visited (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland).

Perhaps it is the use of fresh, locally-grown produce. Not having your food trucked across an entire continent or procured from regional distribution points may be a key factor in the quality of the food.

Just makes me wonder what we have really done to ourselves by moving to the suburbs.

MvK

Markvon, I agree. And our fruit is so pathetic compared to the fruit in Europe. I purchased some apricots at Safeways the other day. They were so beautiful. But they tasted like cardboard! I won't even mention the tomatoes.

LoveItaly,

I won't even touch the produce from the commercial grocery(?) stores anymore. If it wasn't for the local "farmer's market", I would have forgotten the actual taste of a tomato long ago.

Living in central Florida, we get pretty good citrus and OJ, and due to friends and family traveling through GA/SC we can still get decent peaches thankfully. We got some fabulous apples in north Georgia and western NC but thats quite a daytrip for produce.

I was surprised to find that our friends in Europe had such small refrigerators until they explained they shopped for fresh food daily. The butcher, bakery, and produce markets had local offerings daily. I hope they realize how truly blessed they are.

MvK

Yes, even the simple pizza Margherita tastes fantastic in Italy. We had just one not so great dining experience when the food tasted heavy. I think it was the oil they cooked the pasta with.

I wasn't overly impressed with the ordinary, everyday food in Italy. If we just dropped in any old place, the food was mediocre, as it was when we were unimaginative enough to eat in our hotel dining rooms. Only when we sought out recommended restaurants did we find the food to be really good.

Just soaking vegetables in olive oil does not a culinary treat create.

We did think the buffalo mozzarella was considerably better than the stuff we get at home.

I think it's the use of fresh products that makes food in Italy (or Europe in general) taste so good.
As MarkvonKramer says, we shop for fresh food every day. I spend an hour at least every day to go to the bakery, the butcher, the greengrocer's, the milkman, etc. for fresh products.
In fact the food in Italy is very basic. They don't grow a lot of things other than tomatoes, olives and wheat for their pasta!
On the other side, when someone speaks 'Italian food' I usually hear pizza and pasta. Pizza is just a cheap Italian snack and pasta is nothing more than a first course. Main dishes in Italy are usually fish or meat and I can tell you that the meat in Italy is nothing to write home about. There are very little green pastures (except in the north), so how could their beef be good?
Italy ... the food ... the atmosphere ... it's all very suggestive I think.

Actually I like the meat in Italy, and I especially like the game meat. And the fish and the seafood. Of course one can always get a mediocure meal but generally speaking I always have wonderful food in Italy.

Markvon, I need to get to some produce stands out in the country..you are right..that is the only way to get yummy produce.

And all of my friends in Italy have very small refrigerators also because they too shop every day. I love to go shopping with them. But they do have supermarkets now and the worry is that the smaller family run specialty stores will not be able to compete and consequently go out of business. That will be so sad if that happens. Mangia!!

LoveItaly,
The small specialty food stores will be back in a few years. We've had the same thing happen in Belgium some 10/15 years ago with supermarkets. It was easy to have a 'all in one' store to go shopping but after a while people found out that it lacked quality. These days the family run specialty food stores do very good business ... if they sell high quality products.

I don't believe the Europeans will move into the suburbs as readily as we (USA) did, therefore the large SUPER(?)markets may not be able to compete.

I find the produce at local produce markets less expensive (or about the same) and of generally higher quality. Not being trucked 1,000s of miles helps in both cost and quality.

MvK

Hello Myriam, that is encouraging. When I have been in the supermarket in Italy, usually on the outskirts of towns I could have been in the supermarket right around the corner from me.

MvK, we use to have small speciality stores, but we don't anymore. We do have a Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings but for some reason the produce is still not the quality one gets in Italy and it is rather overpriced. Being on my own now I can only eat so much produce in a couple of days..so going out into the country hardly seems worth it for the small amount I would buy. I grew up with a vegtable garden and fruit trees in the back yard so I am spoiled I am afraid. We do not even have a "real" bakery in our small city of almost 100,000 people. Most people buy all the junk pastries at the Big Box stores like Costco or Sam's..disgusting food, lol.

I have eaten very few poor meals in Italy. I am not a "foodie", and wouldn't recognise a Michelin star if I saw one.

To me, the following illustrates why the food is so good: One of my favourite restaurants is a small place near the Cilento national park. The owner has a standard small menu, and the odd "special" scrawled on bits of paper on the tables. Quite often the first few things we have ordered have not been available because he is dependent on what was available from the local fishing boats and markets that morning.

Quite simply, if he cannot get the ingredients fresh, he won't cook the dish.

Three times 'simple':
- simple ingredients treated respectfully, local production,
- simple dishes, seasonal and local products,
- simple cooking without microwave hocus pokus...

good extra virgin olive oil, and lots of it.