Numerous folks come back from their Italian vacation and rave about the food. You can include me in this group. Yet why can’t we seem to be able to cook up a reasonable facsimile of those foods in the US?
For example, we have “Italian” restaurants in San Francisco. Some of them are quite good. But I often find that they fall just short of being remarkable.
I’ve just had brunch at SPQR, a hot new spot in the Filmore district. SPQR features food inspired by Roman cuisine. Overall it was excellent. But, like the others, it fell just short of the mark.
The Roman model uses lots of organ meats and cuts from “low off the hog,” like the belly. SPQR does wonderful things with the hindmost. Then there are lots of crispy, fried coatings that add a delightful crunch to familiar items. Kudos to SPQR, they fry right. Most dishes have a sparkle that comes from salt, just like Roman food in the summer—but are a bit too salty for some Americans convinced that a spare pinch of sodium chloride will leave them dead with a heart attack in the middle of a crosswalk as they exit the restaurant.
But the problem was with the first dish we sampled, a salad of thinly sliced celery, potatoes, lemon juice, olive oil, and dusted with a dried fish roe the Italians label as botarga.
The lemon overpowered everything. This is not because there was too much lemon, as some reviewers have mentioned. This was because the dish was served far too cold, and taste buds diminish the taste of cold food, but your reaction to the acid in lemon stays the same.
Now we arrive at the moment in which I reveal one reason you can’t really get proper Italian food in the US: there are stringently enforced laws against it.
Yes, most health departments require that food coming from the kitchen be either hot or near freezing. And they check on this, poking their little instant-read thermometers into everything, including the salads.
Italians understand the complex relationship between temperature and taste better than government health zealots wielding thermometers. Recipes are often quite specific about the temperature at which the dish needs to be served. Some soups, for example, are to be served “tepido” or tepid. Most of what we would call “cold” appetizers are actually served at room temperature, or “temperatura ambiente.” Seldom is a savory dish served cold in Italy.
As I’ve mentioned before, cold food knocks your taste buds for a loop, freezing them to all but primary tastes like salt and sour—which is why the food tastes overly salty and lemony.
(To be fair, a restaurant owner in the neighborhood—who shall remain nameless to protect the food savvy with good taste—told me that it is possible to have health inspectors overlook room-temperature appetizers if you run a spotlessly clean kitchen.)
So there you have it. Temperature matters, unless you enjoy a tasteless world.
Tough geography makes good food
If you were to gaze at a map of Italy showing the geological features, you’d wonder where, besides the Po River Valley, would big, industrial machines be able to get from barn to field to do the work of making industrial crap crops.
That’s the thing. Italy is really just a bunch o’ mountains sticking out of the sea. Numerous small plots of land in that environment can grow the plants that like to live in those places, making good ingredients for the cooks of traditional Italian cuisine. Taste a Bigliolo bean or a Treschetto onion in the Lunigiana and you’ll see right away the miracles of which I speak.
Good taste by people and government support: priceless!
A third reason for good ingredients is that a great many Italians are willing to spend for decent ingredients, and even large companies know that the tolerance for crap food is low. In my town, I can talk at length with butchers about chickens and feeds. (Well, actually, of course, I mumble a question in my stilted Italian, and they answer at length intelligently.)
And the government, by and large, supports efforts to keep quality high, rather than concentrating on making sure profits are astronomical for industrial crap food companies.
It takes a village, they say, and here in Italy I find much more cooperation toward happiness and well-being than I do in my birthland.
Endnotes:
Ironically enough, given our references to government intervention in food, SPQR refers to the government of the ancient Roman Republic, and is the signature found on its coins and official communications.
Link to SPQR restaurant. Despite the criticism, 4.5 stars out of 5, definitely worth a trip.