Food and Conversation in Italy (Blog Essay)

 My experience with food in Italy has been most vividly different than my American experience when I ate with the local Italian family. The meal itself was set into courses, with first a wine served and light appetizers. Both sides of the room used this time to try to get a feel for the other side. The hosts were attempting to see what foods we would take, and we attempted to see how much etiquette to apply. We both were asking basic questions to get an understanding of whom we were dealing with. This tension soon ended though as both sides understood more of the expectations and good conversation was found. By the time the appetizers had finished, and the plates cleared, room was made for main course of both the meal and the conversation. This is where the food was most filling and the conversation most intellectual. During desert, we sampled liquors and the conversation mellowed and deepened, coming to include topics like the Ukrainian War. The food mimicked the conversation in every step of the meal, with each course meant to reflect the depth of the conversation and what we were to talk about. The thought put into ensuring the food, wine, and conversation all meld together is something I have only experienced in Italy and have not seen in the US.

The logic and value of food in Italy and America is quite different. Italians associate good food with good conversation and as such believe the meal should be uninterrupted and long- acting as the main event. Americans see eating as a necessity, and while good food is always appreciated, we get impatient if sitting anywhere too long and want to carry the conversation elsewhere. This doesn’t even factor in restaurants which try to turn over tables to increase revenue, but I have seen even at family dinners or restaurants run by immigrants that most Americans refuse to sit at the table for too long, even when no external pressure is put on them to leave. Americans have a hustle culture, and like to keep moving, while Italians like to appreciate the moment and enjoy the atmosphere. It can be said that Americans want to experience as many moments as possible, while Italians want to enjoy a few moments for longer.

Neither of these ways are incorrect, and both allow us to experience beauty, which is “fugitive, frequently found in places to which we may never return” (deBotton 214). Americans get many, many fleeting moments of beauty, while Italians can capture these moments for longer periods of time and enjoy them. This is simply our approach to culture, and it can be seen in our food.

The food in Italy generally was more labor-intensive and took longer to make than food in America. The pasta was from scratch, meaning a large amount of effort had to be expended to make the pasta. The pizza was the same way, large amounts of effort on the dough. Both foods also were very situational, requiring experience to know how to adjust the ingredients. They are craftsmen, who are reaching for a “’perfection’ that aims at a technical optimization- the position of the ‘arts’ is fixed, neighboring on but outside the field of science” (De Certeau 66). The pizza lesson in particular is using sciences to improve the food- incorporating chemistry into the kitchen. Much effort has been placed in their craft, and the surprising thing is that this effort is not limited to only the professionals as we might see in the US, but extends to the common Italian family. Both the tiramisu teacher and the families we ate with were not professional chefs- but they still were experts of their foods and honed their crafts and factored in the sciences. You simply do not see this same level of dedication in the average American family. Most American families “cook” using mostly prepacked foods (like prepacked pasta or cans of sauce), and many just order out most of the time.  Some families have recipes passed down over the years that is perfected and adjusted with the ingredients (my family has this with a cinnamon roll recipe) but it is typically just recipes found online. The reason for the difference is due to the value of food. Americans see food as a necessity but move on to other things latter. Italians see food as a social aspect, and thus place more effort on making that food good. Americans get their social interaction not in the kitchen or dining room, but in the living room. We hold conversations over board games and TV, and thus more effort is placed on a good space in the living room to hang out and talk rather than preparing a good meal to hang out and talk at. Some conversation is held after dinner, and I certainly felt like the dinner with the Italian family was like dinners when in-laws were in town, where we have a large meal and talk over drinks afterwards (or at least the adults do). This is much rarer in the US though than in Italy.

Looking at how a society sees eating allows us to see how the society sees the everyday experience because “as any art form...[eating] renders ordinary, everyday experience comprehensible by presenting it in terms of acts and objects which have their practical consequences removed" (Geertz 79). Americans see food as a means to an end, transactional. This is also how they see much of life, a series of transactions and contracts to reach an end goal. This leads to a hustle culture for many Americans as they constantly chase their big goal: their American Dream. Italians enjoy each moment, seeking to lengthen time and preserve each moment: com’era dov’era. They are less goal oriented and more just trying to just enjoy the present. Each society has its own interpretation of success as we can see through the food, because “societies, like lives, contain their own interpretations” (Gertz 86).

Pizza making in Asolo

Italian family Mahira and I ate with

Works Cited

de Botton, Alain. The Art of Travel. New York: Vintage, 2002.

de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.

Geertz, Clifford. "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." Daedalus 134.4 (2005): 56-86