What's the problem with restaurants in Italy?

[Rob@Nice]

Dear Alberto and Pia:

In my opinion the way that Italian restaurants can reach excellence without losing their identity is to be intensely local. I would say RADICALLY local. They need to buy the very best, freshest ingredients from the people who grow and produce them. They should strive to make a cuisine that can;t be duplicated anywhere. I am just now thinking of those little violet artichokes in Italy --the ones that look like they long fingernails. They are not as good anywhere else in the world. Do you know how many different kinds of basil there are?

Aklthough I am American and live in France, all my grandparents came from Italy and I have been travelling there all my life.

Italy is a collection of regions as you know and in each of these regions, the chefs need to get close to land and traditions and make some discoveries and then reinvent. I don't think Italian chefs should be trying to create Italian nouvelle cuisine but should be striving to make the best Piemontese, Sicilian, Tuscan, Sardininan, Neopolitan, etc.

Hey the Romans made wines that aged for hundreds of years in clay amphors. You can't tell me that everything has been exhausted, and that Italian restaurants always have to feature the same six pasta dishes.

Personally, I think restos in Paris--as in most big cities-- are over-priced and mediocre. There's a reason why the best restos are outside the cities and closer to the land.

The problem with the place I described in Radda was not that it was innovative--it was thiat it was trying to please some marketing person's vision. That is why the whole darn region of Chianti Clasico can be so sterile. It's Napa Valley. Too often when Italians think of creating the restaurant they think about the coll modern lighting and the girl they are going to have out front greeting their "VIP" customers. Am I making this up?

By the way, the excellent resto in the Maremma is Bambolo )a hotel restaurant in Donoratico.

Ciao,

Robert

[DeirdreStraughan]

I think it's possible to have the decor and trimmings of an international upscale restaurant and still focus on local flavors and ingredients in the kitchen and wine cellar. Two restaurants fairly close to home for us (in Lecco) do this very well - Lanterna Verde outside Chiavenna, and Crotasc (which I reviewed a while ago in this forum), also near Chiavenna.

Our usual trick when travelling in Italy is to ask some "ordinary" person, e.g. shopkeeper, for restaurant advice. This doesn't get us to the high-end restaurants that a hotel might assume we'd want, but the genuine places the locals frequent themselves. Never missed so far.

[albie]

Bravi Rob@Nice, Albiston!

It gives me the shivers to comtemplate the emergence of a celebrity chef cult in Italy; from north to south, simplicity, integrity and unyielding commitment to the resourceful use of the best in local produce are the foundations of Italian cuisine. I think Batali hit the nail on the head when he said ``the secret to Italian cooking is that there are no secrets!"

Nothing excites me more than happening upon an unprepossesing trattoria in an obscure hamlet in Italy, with mamma and daugthers in the kitchen, pappa in charge of the front the the house and the sons waiting the tables... no linen, gueridons or candelabra anywhere in sight and no ``menu turistico" in five languages on the windows.

[Craig Camp]

The celebrity chef concept is in full-swing in Italy. GianFranco Vissani gets media exposure here that even Emeril would be jealous of - imagine a 20 minute spot on the Today Show -every day- surrounded by the models of the moment. Followed by his own spots every Saturday morning.

... good thing Umbria is not far from Rome.

[albiston]

Bravi Rob@Nice, Albiston!

It gives me the shivers to comtemplate the emergence of a celebrity chef cult in Italy; from north to south, simplicity, integrity and unyielding commitment to the resourceful use of the best in local produce are the foundations of Italian cuisine. I think Batali hit the nail on the head when he said ``the secret to Italian cooking is that there are no secrets!"

Nothing excites me more than happening upon an unprepossesing trattoria in an obscure hamlet in Italy, with mamma and daugthers in the kitchen, pappa in charge of the front the the house and the sons waiting the tables... no linen, gueridons or candelabra anywhere in sight and no ``menu turistico" in five languages on the windows.

albie,

you make an interesting point, which I can very well understand. As I've said before I'm very happy that the Italian eating out scene still has plenty of places serving unpretentious traditional fare. When I travel to places in Italy where I've never been before those are the places I look for to get to know the local cooking.

But I find what you say about celebrity chefs revealing about the idea many foreigners have of Italian cooking, and, no intention to offend, I find it quite ironic that you talk against celebrity chefs in Italy quoting an American celebrity chef who has made his name with Italian cooking. What Batali said is BTW not wrong, actually I'm sure quite a few Italian big names agree, but the way he talks about Italian cooking, though intelligent and pretty exact, reveals he's not Italian. He tends IMO to make things quite easier and simpler than they are.

I personally have nothing aginst celebrity chefs, if they're good pros who love their job and use media to get something across. A celebrity is not only the Emeril kind of figure but also the Thomas Keller one. While I'd do without Emeril any day I think the fact that Italy lacks a famous and charismatic figure a la Keller (or whoever rocks your boat) also contributes to our cuisine not being taken very seriously abroad.

See, what I as Italian, and I'm pretty sure others, find quite annoying when I hear discussions about our cooking is not that foreigners prefer simple regional fare, which can indeed be delicious, but the fact that some think Italian cooking simply is not a cuisine capable of reaching certain peaks of sofistication other cuisines are known for. I've often read about top Italian restaurants on this forum and every now and then the critique would come about how these restaurants are too French-influenced. I feel that's quite unfair: there are quite a few chefs who have evolved a very personal style that often has very little to do with French cuisine, while clearly evolving from homr cooking style. But even in the case of those chefs that are indeed inspired by the French I don't really understand: if it is OK when the British have top chefs making a cuisine derived from the French (MPW, Ramsey, and so on), if it's fine when the top US chefs have developed a cuisine which owes a lot to the classical French technique, if nobody complains about the clear French influence the great Basque cooks have, why do Italian chefs who behave the same way have to be criticised? All these chefs have their own regional/national style that doesn't disappear only because they use a more refined technique.

It would seem to me our cuisine is locked in this picture for many people abroad: great simple regional cooking but pretentious and unoriginal top-class dining. I know not everyone sees things this way, Bill, Deirdre and Rob have all been pretty clear, but I feel many do. If Italy had an internationally known chef I'm pretty sure more people would see things differently. It absolutely wouldn't mean renouncing to our regional dishes: we're too attached to them to let them go, they're as much a part of us as our language is.

ciao

[Alexander Forryan]

This is true for both food and wine. For years the Gambero Rosso only awarded top wine awards (Tre Bicchieri) to the most new-wave oaky wines from each region. Now that this is going out of fashion both with consumers and producers they are having to recognize the great wines of traditional producers. This is the same for food where they only heaped praise on international style restaurants (Enoteca Pinchiorri for example) where now all the attention is on region food with artisan raw materials. The Gambero Rosso is now caught in a net of their own extremes.

From erobertparker.com

"Robert M. Parker, Jr., the author and publisher of The Wine Advocate, has been made a Commendatore (Commander) in Italy's National Order of Merit. The country's highest honor, this decoration was conferred on Mr. Parker by Prime Minister Berlusconi and President Ciampi for his contributions in recognizing the quality of Italian wine in addition to his educational efforts concerning Italian wines in his publication, The Wine Advocate. "

http://www.erobertparker.com/info/commendatore.asp

Did the trend of 'new-wave' oaky wines have anything to do with Mr Parker's influence with producers in Italy looking for a high 'Parker score' to ensure high US sales? He's always seemed to favour a big, un-filtered, oaky, 'international' style of wine.