Sooo Many New Italian Restaurants

[Holly Moore]

This has come up a couple of times in the Pennsylvania forum, but my suspicion is that there are a disproportionate number of new Italian restaurant openings in most major cities.

Why? Two reasons come to mind. Italian cuisine is healthy and it tastes good, most people enjoy it.

Has to be more than that. In Philadelphia it seems that every other new upscale restaurant is Italian. Maybe more. Are there that many Italian chefs looking for kitchens? Is there such a great consumer demand for Italian over all other cuisines? Is it that it is a relatively simple cuisine in which to excel?

[JerzeeTomato]

This has come up a couple of times in the Pennsylvania forum, but my suspicion is that there are a disproportionate number of new Italian restaurant openings in most major cities.

Why?  Two reasons come to mind.  Italian cuisine is healthy and it tastes good, most people enjoy it.

Has to be more than that.  In Philadelphia it seems that every other new upscale restaurant is Italian.  Maybe more.  Are there that many Italian chefs looking for kitchens?  Is there such a great consumer demand for Italian over all other cuisines?  Is it that it is a relatively simple cuisine in which to excel?

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Italian food snob! like to go out and eat what I don't make most skillfully.

Now and then if I hear great things I might but hardly ever anymore.

[Simon_S]

I think it's because Italian food is not too challenging to eat. You don't hear many people saying "I don't like Italian food" -- it may not be their favourite, but they'll still get on with it.

Of course, where I come from "Italian Restaurant" frequently means pasta and pizza and nothing else worth talking about.

Si

[DTBarton]

I agree with Simon, i.e. most people have a positive notion about Italian food, unlike some other ethnic varieties. Good Italian food is relatively inexpensive and simple to prepare as long as you use good ingredients.

And, I think, Italian, along with anything tapas/small plates is the fad du jour glomming on to the "healthy Mediterranean" theme.

[christine007]

and, kid friendly. I really don't know any kids who turn down pasta and meatballs, or pizza.

[phaelon56]

I'm not in a major city but we have long had an abundance of Italian restauranst. As for new places opening... we have finally been blessed with an upscale Tuscan inspired establishment but the vast majority of both old and new places are "red sauce joints". Most are not bad but few are great. The better ones prosper because they offer casual, family-friendly atmosphere, large portions and moderate prices. Not my cup of tea but they continue to abound.

[Toliver]

Many years ago I remember eating out at the Old Spaghetti Factory (a chain) and thinking "They're charging me how much for a plate full of spaghetti and some red sauce?" The same could be said for Olive Garden, Buca di Beppo, Macaroni Grill, etc. Pasta is cheap, and probably insanely cheap when bought in bulk. I'm thinking they're making a lot of profit on a plate of pasta and maybe that's the attraction.

[Meanderer]

While there may be plenty of new Italian restaurants opening, those restaurants don't seem to reflect the various cuisines of Italy very well. Perhaps urban areas are different but outside of the beltways, most everything seems to be red sauced, cream/cheese sauced, and the now-obligatory "Tuscan" this and that items added to the menu. I've seen nothing like the food I've had in Emilia-Romagna, Le Marche and Venice. Don't chefs from those regions open restaurants over here?

[Busboy]

I think it's because Italian food is not too challenging to eat. You don't hear many people saying "I don't like Italian food" -- it may not be their favourite, but they'll still get on with it.

Of course, where I come from "Italian Restaurant" frequently means pasta and pizza and nothing else worth talking about.

Si

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I'd stand that on its head and say that Italian Food isn't too difficult to make and the ingredients are relatively inexpensive. Thus, you can put relatively inexperienced (read:lower-paid) people on the line and charge entree near-entree prices for noodle dishes, thus pushing the tricky economics of restaurant ownership a bit further in your favor -- while turning out tasty food. How many of us cook Italian at home as a kind of go-to food for a nice mid-week meal (I had scallops, pancetta and mushrooms over crwamy polent last night, myself).

Not to dis Italian chefs -- there are many levels of complexity that a chef can achieve, and their passion (or the passion of a committed owner) will come through in the quality of their ingredients and their commitment to their customers. But I think hitting that profitable middle ground (above "ethnic" but below "necktie") is easier with Italian than with a lot of other foods.

[Pontormo]

The large numbers of Italian immigrants in the United States and Canada has profoundly influenced the way North Americans eat. Many came Southern regions, hence the emphasis on red sauce that so many disparage as an easy mark. Dismissing red sauce demonstrates you know something about food.

I suspect that the rise in the fast-food establishment and the democratization of dining out in restaurants that catered to working-class or middle-class budgets were forces concomitant to the emerging cult of pizza, itself aided by the birth of delivery service.

Add to these strains the mass production of dried pastas with names like Ronzoni, though Americans stuck feathers in their caps and called them macaroni a lot earlier. The potential to leap from dried to fresh pastas was there in a long-established market. Then there are the shared qualities of the meatball, the meatloaf and the hamburger that make the former easier to swallow as foreign food.

At the nexus of all of these developments is The American Dream and the desire for revolution. Or capitalism and the taste for novelty it fosters.

As we all know, French became the language of class and cultivation way back when there was no such thing as the printing press. The elite of 19th-century Russia spoke it. I learned it in elementary school when Spanish or Japanese were not options. Some souls still sing its song though their quests for ice water are drowned out by the oboe.

The shadow French Cuisine cast over the culture of the Good American Restaurant blocked out a lot of sun for a long time as a symbol of class and cultivation. It still does. What other options did you have when you went to a good restaurant back in the 1960s? 1970s? 1980s? There were a few so-called Continental restaurants, but they were not the grand ones and most of their menus probably listed approximations of French food.

Jump cut to California here. Alice Waters may have spoken with greatest warmth about Southern France and Richard Olney's Lulu first. Bertolli wrote the first cookbook for Chez Panisse, though, including recipes for pasta and risotto. There is a strong affinity between a simple, no-frills approach to French cooking that stresses the quality and quiddity of ingredients and Italian food. Look at the introduction that Judy Rodgers wrote to her cookbook with its nod to both France and Italy.

Then, there's Napa Valley and the rising prestige of California's wines. Lots of Italian names there.

With all of the forces behind the Californian culinary revolution that crossed the continent, there was receptivity, for sure, amongst the masses who already loved meatballs and lasagna and pizza. French food was for the elite, but Italian food, well, it was more familiar.

So when the kids raised on pizza and meatballs grew up and gussied up after they earned some money, with the virtue of novelty instilled in their hungry little hearts, they were prepared for carbonara instead of red sauce, rucola called arugula and little white bowls of EVOO next to the basket of pane Toscana.

In turn, as Italian-Americans earned positions of greater respect and prestige, new generations were neither looking for quick approximations of their native foods (Ronzoni) nor masking signs of their origins. We may glamorize the "Sopranos" nowadays, but The Knights of Columbus were worried about the kind of Mafia/red sauce/Mamma Mia image that "The Godfather" or "Moonstruck" project.

Northern Italian restaurants may set up a simplistic dichotomy between crude, poor Southern Italy vs. the elegant, cultivated north, but at least Italian cuisine is no longer a monolithic meatball. Their menus acknowledge some of its diversity. They lead the way for a place like Babbo where the bill is high, and dishes from southern and northern regions earn respect no matter how much one might question their authenticity. Batali, thanks to The Food Network and NASCAR, helps to gain even more public recognition so that less ambitious restaurant owners may open places to compete with Olive Garden.

Thus the plight of Stanley Tucci and Toby Shalhoub in "Big Night" is no more, though the croissanwich reigns at the drive-through window where I have yet to see anything fried and stuffed into focaccia.

As far as home cooking goes, see the numbers of English-language Italian cookbooks that are published compared to the numbers representing other types of food. Last year I looked at the statistics at Jessica's Biscuit where Italy beat France off the soccer field, though Amazon's supply may still favor France. Granted, it is not wise to essentialize the appeal of these books to consumers, either. There are lots of unfussy, homey French dishes one can prepare using published recipes and stuffing your own egg pasta takes time even if the skill is not difficult to master.

Edited October 26, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[ghostrider]

This has come up a couple of times in the Pennsylvania forum, but my suspicion is that there are a disproportionate number of new Italian restaurant openings in most major cities.

Why?  Two reasons come to mind.  Italian cuisine is healthy and it tastes good, most people enjoy it.

Has to be more than that.  In Philadelphia it seems that every other new upscale restaurant is Italian.  Maybe more.  Are there that many Italian chefs looking for kitchens?  Is there such a great consumer demand for Italian over all other cuisines?  Is it that it is a relatively simple cuisine in which to excel?

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Just to add that it ain't just the cities, it's the burbs too, at least in my area of Jersey.

Can't find a new Indian place for love or money, but towns that seem saturated with Italian places still manage to support new ones. Often they seem to thrive as much on their ambience as the quality of their cooking.

I think I read some time ago that polls show Americans love "Italian" even though most don't know the difference between Italian-American and Italian.