Craig Camp

ah ha! So this proves that Chicago is not only the best restaurant town, but has the best Italian restaurant in the country! Score: Chicago - 40 stars SF - 20 stars NYC - 16 stars A star is a star right. Actually Spiaggia is a bit French and a bit Italian. If it was in Italy Michelin would give it 2 stars.

You're right - pan is using too many foreign words!

Even if you have to buy one and try it at the store please do so. There is a very high possibility that these bottles have been badly stored for years. Sounds like a high-risk deal.

Veremente una coda lunga, interessante, abbastanza vivace e qualche volta un po strano - ma sto contento perche sto mangando qui.

Please limit your discussion to The Wine Clip and if it works or not and not to any personalities involved and any actions that may or may not have been taken by eGullet management. Pretty please. Pretty please with sugar on top.

There is truth in albie's words. Southern Italian bread and central and northern Italian bread are different things. The best bread in northern Italy is more French inspired these days. I still don't hate the saltless central Italian bread, but I realize it "needs' something with it - salami, cheese or olive oil to make it really enjoyable.

We are talking about food not formulas. However those willing to argue statistics instead of taste always seem to win. That is because numbers are comparable and taste is not. I am not interested and do not care to be involved in a long and involved argument over statistics. Perhaps I am now too old to care about wine scores and cookbook demographics and want to reach out to my own feelings about food and wine even if they disagree with statistics. I assure you I used to be interested in them as much as the next guy. All I know is that I lived in the United States for most of my life. By the time I left I hated to go shopping and found the restaurants boring and expensive. Here I look forward to every trip to the store or a restaurant. I am only interested in what my palate and soul tell me and what they tell me is that is that the food tastes better here and that it is easier and cheaper to obtain. It no longer matters to me what is statistically better, because I know this is better for me and my tastes. I know that is not what make points in a debate, but for me taste seems to have become too personal and I cannot separate the experience from the emotion. In fact, the intertwining of emotion with taste is what makes me love food and wine - at the end it is a personal experience. So I will leave it to others as to what the percentages of what is sold to who and can offer only a personal observation that there is far more attention paid to food in Italy than there is in the USA. The original point of this thread is WHY does everyone love to beat up Italian restaurants outside of Italy after they have eaten in Italy. I think this is indeed an interesting topic.

We can also add a quality instead of quantity issue here. (Funny just like food portions in the USA) The Italian cookbooks and wine guides published in Italy make guides and cookbooks published in English look a bit wimpy.

In terms of food-related media: 1. The question of how many is not relevant. If you want a sales contest the USA will win everything. There are only 58 million Italians and most of them learn to cook from their family and friends. However, there are a huge numbers of cookbooks available here and they are ALL about Italian food. A major difference when compared even with the largest Borders who has to divide their attention between all the cuisines of the world. I assure you even a small book store has more cookbooks about Italian food than the largest American store. 2. The food and wine sections are huge in Italian book stores. Once again they only have 58 million Italians to sell to and most of them already know how to cook. 3. What is this sales and circulation bullying? Of course the USA sells more of everything. 4. No the newspapers worry about politics here. They don't much cover food. More American newspapers should take the hint considering the Better Homes and Gardens food sections they produce - Campbell's soup on everything anyone? However there are far more food and wine magazines here. We could also add all the food, wine and restaurant guides from Gambero Rosso, Slow Food, Veronelli, Luca Maroni and others that come out and are updated every year and on and on...

I can't. So this once again this returns to the question: Whose fault is this? The choices are: A. The ingredients are so inferior you can't do it. B. The customer don't know the difference so you don't do it. C. The chefs have not figured out how to do it. D. Most Italian restaurant owners went to the P.T. Barnum school of restaurant management.

I, for one, am willing to give this problem a shot - again and again until I get it right.

I think a fundamental difference between American's conception of food and the Italian's perspective can once again be illustrated by television which is of course a reflection of our respective cultures. (of this neither the Italians or Americans can be proud) The Italian equivalent of the "Today Show" is "Uno Mattina", as I have mentioned before they devote a huge amount of time every day on Uno Mattina to coverage of food and wine. While the Today Show has regular (weekly I think) appearances of a celebrity chef, Uno Mattina features producers of the raw materials far more than famous chefs. Every day there are several long features with a producer of some cheese, grower of artichokes, salami maker and on and on.. In each of these segments they go into great detail of how the product is produced and how to determine the highest quality. Each segment can easily go on for a half-hour – every day. Like the Today Show, they also have a weekly visit from a celebrity chef, but that chef is more likely to be on a farm somewhere interviewing a producer than in the studio cooking. This extensive consumer knowledge demands that restaurants use the high quality ingredients their customers expect. In other words the Italian coverage spends far more time talking about ingredients than they do on learning to cook them. I would suspect that part of the reason for this is that the producers assume that the viewers already know the recipes. However, it does reflect a general cultural obsession with the raw materials needed to prepare a dish. It seems to me that Americans are often more obsessed with recipes, tools and technique than the raw food materials required. I have observed many times an American cook proceeding with a recipe because of an interest in the recipe itself, in spite of less than pristine ingredients. While, all-in-all, I find this adventurous spirit on the part of American cooks refreshing and admirable: it is decidedly non-Italian. I do not think that the reason Italian food falls short outside Italy is that all the ingredients are inferior. Quality ingredients can be obtained by those willing to spend the money and take the time. While there are certain to be some differences in flavor, it does not preclude high quality results. For instance it is reasonable to assume that Brasato di Barolo can be prepared with equally successful (if slightly different) results in Piemonte or Pennsylvania or that zuppa di pesce can be fantastic in Boston or Bari. There are some ingredients - like prosciutto and Parmigiano that can't be replicated and must be imported and lose quality in the process, but the range of Italian cooking is broad and you can minimize the use of such products. It is incorrect to assume that Italy is a land of gourmet cooks who spend hours each day to search out the ultimate salami or the tomatoes of just one farm, this is no more true than it is in the United States. What is true is that the average consumer is more aware of what constitutes quality and this forces the AVERAGE quality of food to be higher than it is in the United States. Can you find fantastic tomatoes in the USA? Of course you can. What is different in Italy vs. the United States is that the AVERAGE quality of tomatoes that you can buy any day in any grocery is much higher. Strangely enough, this also extends to the beef and chicken, which is of a much higher AVERAGE quality in Italy than it is in the United States. By the way, the horse meat is much, much better here. Admittedly the knowledge and attention of the Italian consumer is concentrated into a far more narrow range of cuisines than the American consumer that has to deal with. A typical Italian consumer has little knowledge of (and interest in) the cooking of other countries. As an example of this you only have to visit a Chinese restaurant in Italy, where they often have to sell pizza and other Italian dishes just to stay in business. Foods of other countries are curiosities to be enjoyed (and complained about) on vacation. To find decent selection of foreign food choices in Italy you are essentially limited to Roma and Milano – and then it is expensive. The major difference has to be the knowledge, viewpoint and the expectations of the consumers.

The difference is that in Italy (and Spain and France) the restaurants and home cooks don't try to make (and sell you) the crappy BBQ brisket, crawdads and Cajun or Creole food that they probably would make while American restaurants do it to French, Spanish and Italian food all the time. Why are you comparing gumbo against west coast Cioppino, the Italian American version of zuppa di pesce - which I will happily put up against both by the way.

Did you really?! You are the only other American I know, besides me, who has eaten asino. What did you think? Personally, I could live without it. It is quite popular for large dinner parties and is served all the time at local festivals - alway on huge mounds of steaming polenta. Actually I think it is quite tasty, but a bit rich.

I think these things get to the heart of the problem for Italian restaurants outside of Italy. This urge to add is a disaster for many Italian dishes. What I have seen done to carpaccio is brutal. The restaurants just can't leave it alone. I have also see many Italian restaurants struggle trying to get the customers to order multiple course meals and setting portions to take this into account and then they just give up and increase portion size.

Are these producers growing standard tomato varieties like you see in Italy or are they special "heirloom" types. Are they organic? Are they available in stores or only to people like Batali?

As a fellow American. I do not understand what your personal experience has to do with the total American market as a whole. I clearly understand that my eating habits had nothing to do with the way that most people eat in the United States. American chain grocery stores would go broke catering to my tastes. It is clear that you are atypical in the same regard. I make the sweeping generalization that most Americans buy on appearance not on taste. You would make the generalization they are all like you. I think a simple trip any large grocery chain store is contrary to your assertion. A store selling equivalent quality could not survive in Europe, but they prosper in the United States. It is clear that you are a serious and dedicated student of cooking and food and that you will go to great lengths to create wonderful things to eat for family and friends. However I would disagree with your position that you are a typical or even average American consumer. By the way thanks for the interesting mini-food blog.

How can you make such an assertion. Tomatoes in American grocery chains are exactly them same in January as they are in August. There is no such thing as a 'season' anymore. Most people don't have gardens and grow their own vegetables. You have to go to special markets to find produce or meat of any quality. The stores carry produce of the quality they do because people buy it without regard to the quality. If they see a recipe that needs tomatoes they buy tomatoes no matter what. I wish five years for you in France, Italy, Portugal or Spain. You will never be able to shop in an American chain store again.

I almost always find sweeping generalities to be incorrect, and usually asinine into the bargain. Here is a great example. I am certain that comparing a fish market not far from Genova, with one in say, Des Moines, Iowa, where people have decided that, for example, second-rate seafood is better than never, ever eating it at all, makes perfect sense to you, Craig. So what I wish for you is that you be trapped in Des Moines for about five years. And then, after you've figured out that because the US is so vast, if you never eat food that has traveled a long way, your diet would be stunning in its lack of variety, someone can point to you and announce smugly that the reason the fish on your table is inferior is because the only thing that matters to you is its appearance. Too late. I grew up in a place that makes Des Moines look like a gourmet seafood paradise. I don't need five more years. I will happily stay here and smug. Smugness is easier to digest than old fish. Obviously you missed the whole point. The point was that people in Italy and Europe in general don't insist on eating things even if they are inferior. If they want fish they will make and extra effort to get it instead of settling less. The thing is what they consider inferior would be thought of as outstanding in my homeland - the great Midwest. What is more interesting: eating a wide and varied assortment of mediocre food or eating a less varied diet made up of only foods of outstanding quality? By the way I had some stinco di asino just the other day. I didn't feel asinine at all while eating it. However that is probably another generalization.

Large commercial producers like Barilla and De Cecco use massive amounts of wheat - much of it imported. Italy could never grow that much - too many mountains. Inexpensive olive oil and extra virgin olive oil in Italy are more likely to be Spanish or Greek than Italian. Tankers of oil arrive in Genova to be bottled by the big companies in Liguria. They do not make this clear. The garlic in our local grocery store comes from Spain and the plums come from France. The yoghurt is from Germany and thankfully so is most of the beer. I am equally thankful that the wine is Italian. Porcini often come from Slovenia. What you can't replace are the cured meats, cheeses, local fish and certain vegetables and fruits - basically all the products that qualify as DOP and IGP (sorry I'll have the links fixed next week - changing servers this weekend).

The amount of time devoted to food by Italian culture is staggering. Each day RAI1, the television network, devotes 4 to 5 hours to food - on weekends more. All the other channels show almost as much. In addition, if you have satellite, there are 2 twenty-four hour food channels. A look at the magazine rack will reveal at least a dozen food and wine publications. People learn about good food and how it is supposed to taste. Conversation about food and food quality is a normal everyday experience. Italians pride themselves on their knowledge of food. For instance, our chain supermarket in town does not carry fresh fish. They don't carry it because Italians don't think the seafood is fresh enough in such a store. This in a place just a few hours from Genova. When people want fish they go to a specialist who they know will have really fresh fish. This means investing extra time and effort just to put higher quality food on your table. Italian restaurants in Italy are faced with incredibly knowledgeable consumers who are willing to go out of their way in their daily life to get good food. This means they have to serve good food or they will not survive. The reason good produce is hard to find in the USA is that consumers are more concerned with how things look instead of how they taste.

I think I had this dish served on pasta at a new-American restaurant in Chicago.

It's not that the USA can't grow good produce. It's that the general consumer does not care. The reason that produce is better in France and Italy is because the consumer demands it and won't buy it if it is not good. Europe is not some blessed land that can grow things that the USA cannot - it is the customers that make the difference.

Parmigiana di melanzane - real Italian food?? Not where we live!

I don't know what Italy you are talking about, but I assure you the industrial revolution has spread through even Italy. Perhaps you haven't seen an Ipermarket? Just last week the Ipermarket had a big promotion of foods from Calabria - even though you can see the Swiss Alps from the store. It seems they have found a way to get the food all 1000 kilometers up to Varese. I hear they are using this new innovative distribution system called trucks.