The question is, what is Italian food?  I continuously see commercials for large chain restaurants that promote their pizza or pasta or panini or whatever “they think” Italian food is and how they have conquered it… finally!! The ones that irk me the most recently are from Pizza Hut.   One commercial shows how they go to Italy and serve unsuspecting Italians Lasagna and how they all rant and rave about how good it is and how similar it is to their mother’s recipe.  Really? Then the chef comes out and announces to everyone that he didn’t really cook the lasagna but it was actually from Pizza Hut and they give the delivery guys a standing ovation.  {If you know Italians at all, you know that NOTHING is as good as their mother’s food (unless it’s their grandmother’s.)}

A recent commercial shows a family that is blindfolded as they drive off to dinner but are actually brought back to their own house… walk up the same 10 steps to their front door but after tasting the pasta they think they’re at an Italian restaurant (if that’s true, they could be the dumbest family in America.)  Pizza Hut’s claim is “Restaurant Quality Pasta”… which goes to show that they don’t even consider themselves a restaurant (neither do I by the way.) In my opinion, restaurants should be shooting for “Home Quality Pasta.”

Let’s look at this from a marketing standpoint for a second…  In my opinion, Pizza Hut’s campaign revolves around the company’s ability to fool people.  So you go to Italy and fool Italians into eating your lasagna and go to New York to fool people into eating your pasta… you even go to someones house and fool them into thinking they’re somewhere else!  Why would you do that?  The obvious answer is to get people to try something that they would otherwise not try then create conclusions for your real target consumer.  I don’t believe Italians are a target consumer for Pizza Hut… but if their Pasta and Pizza is good enough for Italians then their target consumer will feel better about how authentic it is and buy it.  The contradictions are endless though.. authentically fooling people?  So this leads me to one of two conclusions:

1. Either they are incredibly naive (drinking from the company Kool-Aid) and think their Tuscani Pasta (which is what it’s called) is truly authentic Italian food or…
2. They have no intention of being authentic because that’s not what their target consumer wants.  If their target consumer wanted authentic Italian pasta then they wouldn’t be offering “Creamy Chicken Alfredo” or the ever popular and authentic Italian dish, “Premium Bacon Mac N’ Cheese” neither of which would be found a mile from an authentic Italian restaurant.

So why does this irk me?  To me as an Italian American, it’s insulting.  Food is a big part of our culture and not only do we as Italians and Italian Americans know this but the rest of the world knows it as well.  So if your plan is to capitalize on this fact (and many companies have) then try harder! otherwise don’t brand it as Italian.  There’s nothing wrong with creating a Pizza Hut line of pastas… great, maybe it even tastes good but once you call it “Tuscani Pasta” (which isn’t an Italian word that I know of but is meant to be in my opinion)  and then create a campaign on how Italians in Italy love it and people who eat it think they’re in an Italian restaurant, then it’s a different story.  If Pizza Hut really thinks they’re Tuscani line is authentic then maybe we should have a taste test… How about any of their Tuscani Pasta vs. my mother’s pasta.  We can get a whole restaurant full of Italians and see what they think.  I’ll even substitute my mother’s pasta for any Italian mother’s in the country.  Surely their “Restaurant Quality Pasta” is superior to Mom’s Pasta.  Or maybe they can open a Pizza Hut in Italy (surprisingly there are currently no Pizza Huts in Italy) and serve their pasta and Lasagna!  Their taste test obviously proved that Italians love it! What do you think Pizza Hut?  email me and we can make it happen.

So back to the question: What is Italian Food? Italian food to me is more than just ingredients… it’s an experience, it’s creativity, it’s simple and not overdone, it’s making the best out of what you have locally.  It’s creativity that created pizza when southern Italians had little and wanted to make something delicious with the little they had.  It’s not stuffed crust or extra cheese.

5 clues that your food is not authentic Italian

1. Your tractor trailer pulls up once a week and delivers pizza dough and other food made somewhere else that only needs to be cooked or warmed up at your restaurant.
2. Your menu is a never ending list of over-doing-it.  Super sized, stuffed crust, meat lovers supreme, butt buster specials that come in portions that could feed a large family… twice.
3. You need to try way too hard to get approval from Italians because they would never eat in your restaurant and/or have never heard of the dishes you’re claiming are Italian.
4. You use ingredients that can’t be pronounced in an effort to enhance taste and preserve “shelf-life”
5. Your recipes were developed in a laboratory by chefs with chemistry degrees.

So what is authentic Italian food to you?

One of the best things about coming back from Italy is bringing back your favorite Italian snacks… mostly for yourself but also to share with others who have never tried them and get their feedback.  Here are some of my favorites Italian snacks that I brought back from my recent trip.

• Italian Nutella… you can find it here but not in the drinking glass package (and certainly not with Kung Fu Panda!)  How many Italian families have a cabinet full of Nutella glasses?
• Fonzies… if you haven’t had Fonzies, you don’t know what you’re missing. WARNING: more addictive than CRACK.
• Kinder – and all the chocolaty variations.. the hazelnut filled crunchy cookie ones are my favorite!
• Brasilena – The ONLY coffee soda worth drinking… it’s awesome! and only found in Calabria. I had to leave my six pack of glass bottles behind because it wouldn’t fit in my luggage.  DAMN YOU LUGGAGE!
• Guglielmo Coffee – my favorite espresso, also made in Calabria.
• Vecchio Amaro del Capo – an amaro from Capo Vaticano… delicious! especially when served ICE COLD.

What are some of your favorite snacks and brands from Italy?

It’s no secret that Italy is known for certain things, coffee being one of them.  It’s part of Italy’s DNA you could say.  Many brands have been created and have flourished on the foundation of Italian coffee. Starbucks for instance was created with the Italian coffee experience as its inspiration.  I’ve often said (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), once you leave the boarders of Italy an espresso just isn’t the same.  Which brings me to an article that I read yesterday by Tim Manners at Reveries.com on Nespresso…. if you’ve never heard of it, it’s Nestle’s pod espresso. The basic jist is that you pop an aluminum coffee pod into a Nespresso machine and one espresso serving comes out.

I had never heard of Nespresso until last year when I was planning an event in Barcelona and was collecting quotes from from several caterers.  Every quote I received had Nespresso on it….???? I thought the Spanish had gone cRaZy.  Surely they didn’t think espresso was spelled with an N.  Then I thought, maybe that’s how you spell espresso in Spanish.  So that was my first experience with Nespresso and the Nespresso machine.  Back to the article, Illy is actually credited with inventing the single serving pod machine (iperEspresso) but apparently Nestle is the market leader.  According to the article, it costs 7 to 8 times more per serving to make a cup of Nespresso than it does to brew a traditional espresso but it hasn’t stopped people from buying it as Nestle increased sales by 30% in 2008 to $1.7 billion.  Nespresso machines start at 149 Euro and go to over 1800 Euro add that to the cost of each pod .34 Euro and Nestle has itself a gold mine…. it doesn’t stop there however.  Surf the Nespresso website and you’ll find that beyond the 9 premium blends, there are also 3 lungo varieties, limited edition blends and “Special Club” blends from around the world each with an intensity rating.  To top it all off, they have a selection of accessories and 175 retail points around the world… according to the article, at the Nespresso flagship store in Paris (Champs-Elysees) people wait at 5 cash registers 6-7 people deep.   Like it or not, it’s pure marketing genius.  So although Nestle isn’t Italian, they took a piece of Italian DNA (Espresso) and are riding it straight to the bank.  Illy, what happened??

My personal opinion on Nespresso: Not Italian bar quality but pretty good and super easy to make.   I’ll sign off with this Nespresso Commercial staring George Clooney, which also gives you a look at a Nespresso retail store.  (Thanks to “Rockonjuju” for the video and Mawel from flickr for the photo)

If you’re a regular reader of Italyville, you know that I’m passionate about true Italian brands and products.  One of those products is ITALIAN extra virgin olive oil.  I’m not talking about extra virgin olive oil that is brought into Italy from other countries to be mixed with Italian oil or simply bottled in Italy and labeled Italian.  I mean extra virgin olive oil made from olives grown in Italy, oil processed in Italy and oil bottled in Italy without being mixed with oil from other countries.  Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against extra virgin olive oil from Spain or Greece or California or any other place that produces a quality product… which they do.  However, my passion for Italian extra virgin olive oil runs deep and is rooted in my families livelihood in Calabria.  Like many southern Italian families, my family has a large olive plantation and my uncle owns an Oleificio (where they make oil.)  So they live or die by the success of the crop and the market price of olive oil.

Italian extra virgin olive oil like many Italian food products has appeal and is perceived as being of high quality (which is true in many cases.)  Unfortunately for that same reason, there are many products of lesser quality that have taken advantage of the reputation of Italian extra virgin olive oil and are profiting by using an Italian name, or purchasing cheaper oil from other countries that are mixed with Italian oil and bottling it in Italy.  The oil itself regardless of its origin may be of high quality but the fact is, it comes down to branding….. and labeling a bottle “Italian extra virgin olive oil” helps sell.  What does all this do?  Bringing oil into Italy from other countries increases supply and it drives the price of Italian olive oil down, which in turn affects local farmers.  Some Italian companies are among the culprits.  This article sheds a little more light on the situation. All this talk about olive oil leads me to this article that I read this week in our local newspaper regarding olive oil standards in the state of Connecticut. There are companies that are passing non-olive oil as extra virgin!! Apparently the state of Connecticut is the first state to pass quality standards for olive oil.

**If you’re in need of some high quality Italian extra virgin olive oil in Calabria or need an Oleificio to process your olives, visit my zio Mario.  He is one of the most genuine, honest people I have ever known and a regular comedian…. and that’s not just because he’s my uncle.

]]> http://italyville.com/2008/11/brand-italy-extra-virgin/feed/ 8 http://italyville.com/2008/09/delicately-priced-pasta/ http://italyville.com/2008/09/delicately-priced-pasta/#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:36:00 +0000 Joe http://italyville.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/delicately-priced-pasta/ I was at a local grocery store the other day that in my my opinion has been modeled after a Whole Foods…. basically it has lots of organic foods, high end products, etc. and I came across a display for “Benedetto Cavalieri” pasta (from Lecce.) It was in a real fancy package (that included [...]]]>

I was at a local grocery store the other day that in my my opinion has been modeled after a Whole Foods…. basically it has lots of organic foods, high end products, etc. and I came across a display for “Benedetto Cavalieri” pasta (from Lecce.) It was in a real fancy package (that included a ribbon.) It looked good and since I am always one to try new pasta, I bought a pound of the Casarecci…. even though it was $7.99! I cooked it and it was good… not sure if was $7.99 good but I chalked it up to experience. De Cecco is still better:) I guess I got a deal since I just saw some online for $8.60.

Here are a few reasons I think they can justify the high price of this pasta:

1. They’ve been around since 1918…. if it’s an old company they can charge more.
2. Apparently they use the “Delicate Method” which is VERY expensive. It costs more to be delicate.
3. The Blue ribbon on the bag.
4. I hope you’re not taking me seriously.;)

UPDATE: Just to clarify: I certainly realize that Italians eat packaged foods and other “porcheria” like anyone else and that Italian companies make (in my opinion) junk (like Barilla sauce, which we also have here) My point is this: Regardless of what you name it or who makes it or where you may have learned it (Olive Garden) it doesn’t make it authentic. Barilla is an Italian company in every way…. but jarring ready to eat pasta sauce is not authentic Italian (profitable maybe but not authentic) Olive Garden may send it’s chefs to Tuscany to learn the secrets of Italian cooking but one glance at their menu and there’s nothing authentic about it. Bertolli’s sauce in a microwavable bag…. well, as Maria from Philly would say, “WTF is that??” So to any company who emails me or any other blogs to ask us to promote your products, I say this: Take a look around, what do we post about? How are we branding ourselves?

Original post:

For the second time this year, I’ve received an email from a company asking me if I would mention their product on Italyville and in exchange they would send me some of their product for free. I don’t have a problem with mentioning products or services that I use or am interested in or products that are authentically Italian…. but they have to fit in with brand Italyville.

So let me just list a few things that authentic Italians would NEVER DO.

1. We don’t buy ready to serve jarred tomato sauce regardless if it’s “Old World Style” or “the way Mama used to make” or “Nonna’s secret recipe” …. We’ve all thought of starting our own brand maybe but WE DON’T BUY IT.
2. We don’t understand how in the world ANYONE could think that a sauce like Prego or Ragu is good or how in the world anyone would eat it. Seriously.
3. Some of us may use microwaves to heat up leftovers or for popcorn but never as a primary cooking appliance. (My mother uses hers to store bread)
4. We don’t buy or eat frozen dinners. We plan life meal to meal… so why would we waste one on a frozen entree?
5. We’ve changed many of our friends’ habits and lives by having them over for dinner. I guess they just didn’t know what food was supposed to taste like ????
6. We often describe pre-packaged products as schifo or porcheria.

Traditional? Who’s tradition are they talking about?

In addition, I would like to add a few Italyville “Brand Italy” facts:

• Just because your company or brand was originally Italian, started by an Italian, has an Italian name and makes a product that you think is Italian…. doesn’t make it Italian.
• Chances are, if you’ve been bought by Unilever, CSC, Kraft, General Mills, etc….. you’ve probably lost some Italianess.

Here are a few examples of “sorry but your brand trying to be Italian isn’t working”

• Burger King’s Italian Chicken Parm Sandwich (really? stick to burgers BK)
• as mentioned above, Prego and Ragu (enough said)
• Bertolli’s microwavable sauce in a bag…. (what the? a double negative doesn’t make a positive in this case and believe me, there are no real Italian chefs getting upset at any of Bertolli’s products ANYWHERE.)
• Olive Garden (first of all, I don’t believe there is a cooking school in Tuscany that their employees go to…. and if there is, who’s running it? not a real Italian chef!!)

Those are just a few, I would love to hear about your favorite “Trying to be Italian” brands.