They act like Italians have been making these famous recipes for thousands of years while pretty much all the famous dishes are 100 years or less or a few centuries old at best for some few.
Besides that cuisine is an evolving thing, people should be able experiment however they want, that’s how it’s improved over time. The only worry should be how it tastes, not arbitrary limitations and criticism on how it has to be done.
And let me add that chicago pizza is pizza, it’s not a trademarked word. I prefer regular pizza but people taking offence at that is just silly.
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It’s snobism, and it serves to make yourself feel superior.
Ironically it was Italians’ openmindedness to New World ingredients like tomatoes and peppers that made their cuisine so universally revered.
fake outrage about breaking pasta is equally regarded
I’ve seen people ripped to shreds in the pasta or Italian food subreddits for adding herbs or spices that aren’t traditional. Extremely closed minded way of doing things.
I am Italian, and 100% agree with you.
Everyone should eat how and what they want.
Cooka da meatball
Idk how unpopular that is haha food has always improved through experimentation with new ingredients and cooking methods in every culture. I think the Italian trope comes from that stereotype of no one’s sauce being better than their family’s sauce which obviously is almost never literally true lol it’s more like a tradition/comfort thing. It’s no different than all the restaurants that claim to have “the best” whatever or grandma’s recipe being “the best.”
Pasta came from China. Tomatoes from the Americans. Bread from Mesopotamia. Wine from the Caucasus.
Italian cuisine as we know it is rather new.
I did my Erasmus year in Italy. Lived with a host family instead of dorms and totally immersed myself within the culture. You know what I found? That Italians aren’t actually as snobbish as Reddit makes out. The ones that perpetuate this view are often “Italian” Americans. The ones that insist on pronouncing mozzarella in an “Italian accent” despite having lived in New Jersey for generations. Oh and they can’t speak a lick of Italian either.
My take is that Italian food is easy to make, so they have to harp on ~tradition~ and ~quality ingredients- to justify costs and its reputation. Of course food tastes better if you use better quality stuff.
It’s the same the world over; every region has a superior ‘sense’ about something.
Remind Italians that they sided with Hitler and that tomatoes aren’t native to Italy
The funny thing is, Italians have this snobbery about their food but go to Italy and eat anything non-Italian and it’s dreadful. They have a terrible palate. From authentic Chinese food to Latin American, it is just garbage. They’ll talk about food in America unironically without realizing that the breadth of options in America is so far beyond what they have that they don’t really know what they’re talking about.
There’s an influencer that does the “my Italian husband tries Olive Garden” or “making pasta wrong in front of my Italian husband” bits and it’s so overplayed after two videos and she’s been doing them like everyday for years…. It’s not even obnoxious, it’s just a dumb flat joke
My nonna in-law (proper Italian) taught my in-laws a valuable lesson when they were upset I wasn’t following a recipe of minestrone soup. She told the family that minestrone is a soup of leftovers, same with pasta sauce. The very heart and soul of Italian cuisine is making the most of what is available on hand.
I agree Italians can be very defensive of their foods. But I agree with the sentiment that if you’re going to cook a specific dish and then completely change the recipe then you shouldn’t be calling the original name, because it might give the wrong impression to people who weren’t previously aware of said dish.
I put queso fresco in my “paneer” tikka masala instead of paneer because I couldn’t find it. This has nothing to do with Italians I just thought you might want a fun fact about my wild and crazy life
I think its an immigrant thing. I read somewhere once that generally cultures evolve, but with immigrants, it freezes at the moment you leave. So people get very caught up in the exact brand of “authentic” that happened to be their immigrant grandparents style.
In Italy itself the same dish may be made differently from one town to the next. Its seems to be the Italian Americans that are so very set in their ways. IME.
I’m Italian and I largely find it very annoying as well. That being said, there are two aspects where I feel it is more acceptable for people to be mildly annoyed:
Dishes that have a name are more or less codified. “Pasta” is a format, you can make it with whatever you like. But something like “carbonara” is a specific dish with a specific-ish recipe. You can change the recipe however you like, but calling it like the original is very misleading. This is not unique to us, yet I feel we are the only ones who get told to let it go
If I had to sum up the entire philosophy of Italian cuisine with a single concept, it would be “few ingredients”. That’s as fundamental as spices are for Indian cuisine, for example. So whenever we see someone making an “Italian” dish using every single ingredient in their pantry, it makes us cry inside a little. We understand we don’t have any right to stop you, but it just hurts. It hurts a lot.
Of course you can experiment and create new recipes.
They just aren’t the original recipes, and need to be named something else. I hardly think this is unique to Italian food, either, it is just… food. 🤷♂️
My dad used to say real Italians don’t put cheese on fish. He definitely pissed some people off by saying that
I think the point is more that Italian food is notoriously simple. Kind of like Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi… less is more. Only just the things you need to make it great. Many Italian recipes have like 5 ingredients or less. A lot of the reason this is possible is the quality of products available in Italy.
So when others take a recipe of like 3-5 ingredients that Italians consider perfect, and add like 3-5 MORE things that just aren’t necessary and (key here) calling it the same name is annoying.
I think the attitude is like – if you want to call it carbonara, make carbonara. If you want to add 5 extra ingredients give it a new name. Adding isn’t always improving. The enemy of “best” is “better.”
Alright, but you gotta get over it.
Let’s be honest, there’s a whole grift dedicated to making things seem Italian when they certainly are not. You can get something called a spicy Italian pizza at Papa John’s. There’s nothing Italian about it. Papa John himself is some big Trump supporter named John Schnatter. Oh I’m sure he’s got an Italian half cousin or something right? And don’t even get me started on Starbucks. Get a venti cappuccino late in the evening, really? So yeah, Italians have a right to get pissed that people (many who are as Italian as Kermit the Frog) try to make things seem Italian for the purpose of selling more product, only to cause uninformed people to think those things are Italian.
I feel so good when some are willing to try it and to admit that their initial judgements were wrong, here’s one self-proclaimed “Italian food police” talking about how much she loves Americanized food like mac & cheese, pizza with ranch, chicken alfredo: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMSNaWm6C/
It’s a pet peeve of mine when Italian Americans act like they’re world class chefs because of their heritage. Like there’s nothing innate that makes you a better cook than someone else!
It’s sauce, not gravy
I’m going to assume that OP had to take breaks from typing this to gesticulate wildly.
I actually find it pretty amusing but maybe that’s because I’m an idiot. I don’t really take the jokes that seriously or think Italians are actually like that.
Is your opinion that the trope isn’t funny or that Italians shouldn’t get upset? Because you say the former then argue the latter, and really the arguments you make are kind of what is supposed to make the trope funny
I think the issue that people have is that people create new recipes and then still call it Carbonara for example.
Sure, you made egg and cream sauce with chicken and peas, but that’s not Carbonara.
Imma break my sketti pasta in half and fuck anyone who has a problem
I blame that one influencer couple with the American wife and Italian husband who just make 500 different versions of the same video where she “accidentally” breaks some unwritten rule of Italian food culture and he goes all 🤌 🤌 🤌 🤌 🤌
I’m Italian. It’s annoying.
I had a huge fight with a woman i was dating. Her entire family was Italian. I was not a big fan of their pasta dishes, so I would make improvements for my servings. They did not like that. It was a shit show. She would never let me live it down. It was so controlling and such a turn-off. I hated eating with her and her family.
As an Italian i can tell you that we have nothing against recipe changes as long as you dont try to sell it to us under the same name.
The fettuccini alfredo usa thinks is correct have nothing in common with the Italian original.
Just change the name.
And chicago deep dish is not pizza, as clearly and exhaustively explained by Jon Stewart. Just call it something else.
I 100% agree with what you’re getting at. My gripe is at some point of modification it just isn’t the same dish.
If you tell me you’ve got the best carbonara recipe in the world but you’ve added cream, mozzarella, sausage and fennel then it’s not a carbonara. At least in terms of the Italian chefs I worked with, that’s their issue.
It’s not that your bolognese made with Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and a hint of chilli is bad, just please stop calling it a bolognese.
Not an unpopular opinion
Not my neighbour. She’s given me shit multiple times for using the wrong sort of cheese or the wrong tomatoes etc. I’ve stopped inviting her around to eat.
I like it when it’s done for comedic effect, but I agree that being snobbish about it is gross.
Agree. Nothing worse than the instagram comments of Italians when someone makes an Italian dish but uses the wrong type of cheese
My understanding is that some recipes that have a name are to be made as directed and are not suitable for improvisation. Like, there are certain fruits you can and cannot put into a fruit salad known as “macedonia” and still call it macedonia.
With other recipes, it’s just fine to improvise some, which is why there are so many varieties of puttanesca, for instance.
I don’t think it’s that people are snobbish. They are just particular about this one thing for certain dishes, for which there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. I’m no expert, but this is how I have understood this.
I frequently hang out with italians in italy and one thing that is universal about all of them (that I hang with)
they cant cook for shit xD
Many Italians have little more to be proud of than their food which is why they keep it in such high regards
Yes, but at the same time they are right to be mad in some instances
Most of the time these are just Americans.
As an Italian abroad, it’s annoying. I spent my whole life having people expect me to get angry at the way they make Italian food. Buddy, I never even lived in that country. I’m a first gen immigrant, I don’t know how the hell things are done in Italy and I don’t care about how you do them. I don’t know how to do things the ‘proper’ way myself because my family changed some of our recipes or methods based on ingredients we find in our current country so why the hell would I be pissed at how you make it?
For the love of my sanity, stop telling me you like pineapple on pizza just to try get a reaction out of me. I don’t care.
As a Brit who moved to Italy I loved that there were ‘rules’ so to speak for food and drink and it helped me take on the culture quicker. But those traditions aren’t set in stone and it isn’t as dramatic as the stupid social media people who milk it make it seem.
Yeah, never understood the ire for deep-dish. Maybe it’s because I live in the Chicago-adjacent area, but man, nothing hits quite like deep-dish pizza, save for a select few pizza restaurants.
No, I don’t care the sauce is on top. No, I don’t care it’s got more in common with lasagna or a “fucking casserole” (seriously, those comparisons make it sound more appetizing). It’s fucking delicious and is analogous enough to pizza that I feel comfortable calling it pizza.
Also a lot of these changes they cry about were made by Italians who immigrated to other countries. They’re just being self righteous snobs like many other European countries
Here’s an American take: I’ll cook and eat whatever the fuck I want and if you don’t like it then come up here and try to stop me.
This is one of those impressions people get when they believe the internet is the real world.
This is such an interesting topic. I’m Italian and was asked by someone how to make tiramisu. I told them they needed lady fingers (traditional) and they were like “no, I want to make it the traditional way, with a cake…” like ok, I’m not offended you want to use cake, but it was so funny to me that they thought that was traditional and that actually traditional ladyfingers was “cutting corners”
Oh!!
Chicago pizza is
pizzaa mistake. FTFYThe trope of Italians being ridiculously over emotional over small things is hilarious and often true.
American like to think that all Italians are home eating zero processed food and stirring pasta sauces all day long. It’s cute. Pathetically daft but, cute I guess.
I was with you until you said Chicago “pizza” is pizza. It isn’t. It’s a casserole. Experiment with food all you want, but don’t normalize mislabeling things. If Chicago “pizza” is pizza, then a calzone is a burrito.
What’s the difference between 100 years and a 1000 years?
I agree in the point that the over dramatic reactions on TikTok are annoying! Like chill my guy, it’s Carbonara, the world doesn’t end if they use cream
However, recipes do carry expectations! So if I order a Carbonara in a restaurant, I expect it to have no cream!
(But feel free to go wild, add cream, mushrooms, peas, whatever you want and call it “Carbonara-inspired” or what not)
Just don’t call something with a name that does not belong. A modified dish that don’t look or taste like the original should carry a new name.
The idea that Italian food was essentially invented very recently isn’t without some controversy. Video discussing some the claims here
So…I can break the spaghetti if I want and it’s easier to make?
most of the time it comes down more to the name.
if you take a hamburger, and remove the beef patty, but add a piece of fried chicken, is it still a hamburger? of course not.
carbonara is a sauce made from pecorino, egg and guanciale. if you change the pecorino and guanciale for something else, it doesnt mean youre a bad person, it just means you made something else.
Not unpopular
As an Italian, it’s just dumb rage bait. No one ever gave a fuck about pineapple on pizza, breaking spaghetti, cappuccino past noon and other idiotic stuff. The sad fact is that as this kind of videos are also popular here in Italy, some people is starting to believe or act like these have always been real rules now lol
You can eat whatever you want and modify our recipes all you want. What usually get to our nerves is false claims like “authentic Italian [something]”. It’s not nice to see your own culture misrepresented. Italians will gladly talk to you about the good and the bad of our country and culture (of which food is a big part of), but will get pissed at false claims.
Also a lot of the “italians” who do those stupid meme react videos are stupid.
There’s a michelin chef that uses broccoli and breaks it down to make a green sauce and folks were fucking fanatical against it.
There was also a video a long while back or maybe a post on r/cooking where someone made a dish their grandma used to make with basically hard boiled eggs in meat sauce or something. People in the comments were freaking out saying that’s disgusting or whatever. Then a chef from italy responds saying it’s an extremely traditional dish, they weren’t sure what’s up everyone’s ass.
Plenty of people in the comments don’t like recipes being changed from what they think is correct. Maybe the trope isn’t so wrong after all. There is the chicago pizza isn’t pizza comment, and that we need to rename fettucini alfredo if we aren’t going to make it correctly.
The only think that isn’t a pizza is if there is pineapples… while technically almost a pizza, it is a monstrosity and is not food and should be immediately tossed.
Approved 🤌
People often think that something that’s traditional and original must be better. Great food comes from taking a good idea and elevating it.
Recipes will always change over time. Because the ingredients are changing. Roma tomatoes used to be smaller and have less water. Now they are as big as regular tomatoes and less tasty. Then, add in the changes of processed food. Nearly all canned soups have increased their water content. I now use tomato paste instead of tomato soup. Even meat, especially chicken, has more water content. Sometimes, ingredients from old recipes are just no longer available.
You put cream in your sauce didn’t you?
Chicago deep dish is a very delicious meat pie. It’s not a pizza.
I mostly see it when people say like, “I’m making traditional Italian cabonara” and then using cream instead of egg. Or making a traditional Italian margherita pizza, but making it deep dish or with red sauce as the base.
Don’t call it traditional Italian and then change it completely. Granted, I feel that way about most food. If you want to call it traditional, make it how tradition says to, not your own version of it.
Its like a shepards pie being made with beef. Thats just wrong. That would be a cottage pie. A sheppards pie uses lamb, because ya know sheppards own sheep.
i agree but this reminded me of how mad my italian-american mom got when sharing a recipe with a relative. The relative ended up changing the recipe a bit (I think they replaced some meat with another) and my mom was PISSED. I think some people find it insulting if it’s a recipe that’s been in the family for a long time
I’m upvoting this because it’s both an unpopular opinion and one I agree with
Italians ( even us Italian-Americans) are overly dramatic in a joking way and like to mess around/bust balls. They might be only slightly serious that breaking spaghetti in half is a sin, but they will make you feel like you just slapped their mother. It’s mostly all in fun. And 90% of the tiktok are skits.
In general, I find it correct to do a recipe as written and as “traditionally” correct first, to understand what each featured ingredient and technique is doing… but after that, of course you modify as you see fit, for your taste, limitations and consideration.
Lots of Italians bitching about how to correctly make a carbonara, few actually know why guanciale works better than bacon in that case. Your nonna made it this way, huh? Guess what – I’ll listen to your nonna, but not to you.
Ok chicago pizza is not pizza.
Wait, who’s “they?” “They act like Italians” etc. Not sure who you mean.
Okay, I’ll be the one to defend snobish behaviour, only because I feel like some things are being missed in the majority of comments.
First and foremosf, true snobby behaviour is not cool, lets get that out of the way. If someone acts like you killed their father because you brike spaghetti, thats ridiculous, I wont defend that. But at the same time, i think some aspects of this conversation get neglected.
For starters, i know the trend of italian reaction videos is out there, but this kind of behaviour is not in any way exclusive to italians. If youve ever watched an Uncle Roger video, you know that he has been doing the same thing with Asian cuisine for a decade now. But also, lets talk about why people are elitists. There is a famous Gordon Ramsay clip where he is in Thailand making pad thai for a thai chdf, and the chef, upon trying his dish, says that he didnt make pad thai cause he completely botched the flavor profile. To me thats not elitism. that’s just cultural knowledge. But where do we draw the line? I mean if i give you a pad thai from an authentic thai place we can probably agree that this is pad thai, and if i give you spaghetti dipped in barbecue sauce covered in almonds we can probably agree that this isnt. So where is the seperation between cultural relevance and adherence? In my eyes, it’s based on having a respect and an understanding of the previous recipe, and in large part, the way words are used to understand cuisine.
Let’s pretend you go to a bar and you ask for a rum and coke. Well, we all know what goes into a rum and coke, 2 ingredients. Some folks may choose to add little additions, but at the core of it, you need rum and coke. Now let’s say when the bartender gives you the drink, it’s actually wine and an orange crush. And when you make the obvious claim that they fucked up your order because its got neither rum nor coke, they tell you “well its got alcohol and soda, so its basically the same thing, stop being so elitist” wouldnt that be kinda silly? Well I think in a lot of ways, this is what Italians on youtube are expressing. People who make recipes from their culture, alter them so fundamentally from their roots and then still use the original name despite having almost none of the soul or flavor profile of the traditional meal.
Going back to Gordon Ramsay, he was a boon for Italian reaction channels when he made a carbonara recipe that so completely was not carbonara, that it begs the question why call it that in the first place? Surely if he had just called it egg pasta it would not have gotten as much attention or hate, why use a name that has a specific meaning, an associated flavor profile, just to disregard that flavor profile and make something different. I think we can look at that and say that in the same way the thai chef I mentioned previously did, that this is not carbonara. But what about the more nuanced differences? Things like bacon or cream?
Speaking as someone who has never been to italy but was brought up by parrents who were from there and with a lot of the traditions they carried, Italian food is in a lot of ways to me about compromise. A lot of classical pasta dishes are incredibly simple, and thata because they were from a time where wealth was not abundant. In other words, modification is the name of the game. Making carbonara and dont have guanciale? Pancetta works. Dont have romano cheese? Just use parm. I think the big thing that people miss when substituting though is the desired flavor profile. For example, substituting bacon into carbonara is not great, because its smoked meat not cured, and it shifts the flavor profile completely. The reality for me (and probably many others) is that if we didnt have all the ingredients or apt substitutes, we would just make something else.
The last thing i want to say to try and keep this under 1 hour of reading time is that food is culture, and i think this is very important. In no other aspect of culture is it apt to tell people how they can think and feel about the way others appropriate aspects of their culture. You wouldnt call a native american snobby for saying he doesnt like it when a white dude dresses up as a racial caricature for halloween. You wouldnt call a Japanese man elitist for looking down on people who shape their ideas of Japan from anime. Why does food get this special pass from any cultural awareness we have?
Look ultimately this really isnt a problem, you have the power to simply keep eating deep dish pizza and putting ham in carbonara, and nobody can stop you. And will most people even care? Probably not. But if you go out there and try to teach people how to make a dish that you dont understand, and then receive flack from the people who do understand it? I mean what did you expect
fun fact carbonara was heavily influenced by American soldiers
I’m an Italian and I make amazing pasta and pizza if I dare say so myself. My secret? I add curry powder to the tomato sauce.
Is this better or worse than the YouTube/content trend of “my Italian spouse is my personality”?