VOLUME 20. NUMBER XIII. 2016
Gastronomia
The Italian Journal explores the culture of food in Italy and its variety of influences and personalities.
Inside this issue
The Simple Luxury
On a recent trip to Bologna (2016), I found myself drawn into the halls of the Municipal Building, tempted by a brochure I had read that suggested there was some beauty to behold inside the imposing stone edifice. Some limited signage indicated an upstairs gallery: up a steep gradated stairwell, the kind that allowed for […]
The Intellectual Foundations of Italian Food
Is there something unique about the way Italians think and talk about food? For a long time social scientists made a distinction between societies that just cooked the same basic dishes every day, and those that had developed a high cuisine created by professional chefs for a nobility or other affluent group. This goes along […]
Why Italians love to talk about the food
People in Italy talk about food a great deal, much more so than in other parts of the world. Whereas a British or Russian intellectual feels that an exaggerated attention to food may lower the caliber of the conversation and will primly skip over the subject, the Italian lingers over it with visible pleasure, dwelling […]
The Epic History of Italians and Their Food: Interview with John Dickie
A best-selling British author, historian and academic, John Dickie is an internationally recognized specialist on many aspects of Italian history and his books have been translated into many languages. Best known for his compelling journeys into the history of Italian Mafia (Cosa Nostra: A History of The Sicilian Mafia, 2004; Mafia Brotherhoods: The Rise of […]
The Sicilian Food Revival
Italian food has come a long way in recent years. To take London as an example, the all-in ‘Italian’ restaurant serving Spaghetti Bolognese (‘Spagbol’ in common parlance), an Anglo-American invention, together with variety of other standard fare regarded as generic to all regions are now on the way out. No doubt helped by the 500,000 […]
“The Bread Is Soft”: Italian Foodways, American Abundance
Sometime toward the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, Giuseppe Mormino, a resident of Alia, a town in Sicily’s Palermo province, received a letter from his brother Rosolino. Rosolino composed his letter on the other side of the Atlantic in Napoleonville, Louisiana, where the young man labored on a sugar can plantation. […]
Food as a literary and political icon in Italy
Italian novels and non-fiction have always been spiced with an abundance of culinary references. Far from being a mere descriptive element contributing to realistic representation, food is a significant narrative ingredient in both classic and contemporary literature, enriching it with anthropological, psychological and sociological “flavors.” In his Divine Comedy (1304-21), Dante Alighieri refers to bread […]
Campo de’ Fiori Market in Rome
Campo de’ Fiori is a market in Rome that a lot of people love. It is also a market that a lot of people love to hate. The open air market in Campo de’ Fiori is undeniably one of Rome’s most famous. Much of this has to do with its location. It is pretty much […]
What Artists Ate
By Katherine A. McIVER We can gain a sense of what the average (or artisan-class) person ate and what foods they preferred by looking at a few artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who was supposedly a vegetarian, or Michelangelo (1475-1564), who purportedly did not care much about food, or Pontormo (1494-1557), who kept a […]
Italian Food as a Literary Device in Hemingway’s Fiction
In his fiction, Ernest Hemingway takes readers on unique sumptuous journeys to different countries and makes the sights and sounds of these places visible in front of the readers. With the eyes, ears and palate of an artist, he weaves these travel experiences into the fabric of his fiction. From his early years in Oak […]
Gaze and Taste in Some Contemporary Works
Recounting food in an unusual way, according to relationships that do not belong to the everyday rules. Recounting art in a manner equally anomalous, crossing the 20th century in forms unexpected and unsettling. A tricky but profound connection that regards the taste within the eyes and the gaze within the flavor. With the freedom of analysis […]
Food Save Italy
L’Esposizione Mondiale del cibo 2015 ha certamente puntato il riflettore su un tema importante soprattutto in Italia. Come si concilia la storia delle tradizioni culinarie di un Paese con le contaminazioni gustative, ma anche di consumo e creative, che provengono dai processi di globalizzazione? In realtà la questione ha una portata quotidiana e di sperimentazione […]
Food for All
An interview with Valentino Fabbian, CEO Chef Express Spa. By Ludovico Rossi Purini.
The elegance of food. Tales about food and fashion
Hosted in Rome, “The elegance of food. Tales about food and fashion” was a one-of-a-kind exhibition that celebrated the perfect marriage between nutrition, the key theme of EXPO 2015 in Milan, and Made in Italy creativity .The exhibition ran until the 1 November 2015 at the Mercati di Traiano Museum in Rome, an archaeological site of […]
Chefs of la cucina Italiana
Massimiliano Alajmo comes from a long line of successful chefs and restaurateurs. In 1993, Alajmo began to work with his mother, chef Rita Chimetto, at Le Calandre in Veneto, Italy. He was appointed head chef a year later. When the restaurant received its third Michelin star, Alajmo became the youngest chef to obtain the achievement […]
Joe Bastianich
As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water. In the case of Joe Bastianich, traditional Italian tomato sauce is also thicker than water. Bastianich worked with his parents, Felice and Lidia Bastianich, at their Queens restaurant Felidia. Lidia is famous as a beloved television chef, cookbook author, restauranteur and owner of a food and […]