Globalisation means that even Italians can buy American-style products in its supermarkets such as peanut butter (I’m a fan), tacos, Doritos, and Oreo cookies. However foreigners in Italy often complain that they have a hard time finding American, British and other non-native foods – particularly outside of big cities.
There may be a handful of villages where immigration to the UK occurred which new have bistros and bakeries serving British dishes and foods. But otherwise, non-Italian restaurants such as Mexican, Lebanese and Vietnamese are nowhere to be found in rural, less populated areas.
Milan is one thing but a tiny village in rural Basilicata is entirely different.
Foreigners come to Italy for the great food, but in the long run, particularly for foreign residents always eating the same indigenous cuisine, no matter how divine it is, it can sometimes get boring. Tastebuds get numb after just so many years of eating pizza, amatriciana pasta and lasagne or tortellini.
I never thought any foreigner could get bored of eating Italian cuisine, but I’ve met several people who have and complain about the non-variety of restaurants.
Outside big cities it is hard to find non-Italian food, especially American and Indian for instance. I know several Brits and Americans living in small rural villages in the south who have had enough of the zero availability of other cuisines and are fed up of always eating Italiano.
Ben and Anne Greene, a retired couple from Brighton, relocated to Calabria four years ago where they bought a rural house for less than €40,000 near the village of Cinquefrondi. Given the low prices and cost of living, for the first year they regularly went out for dinner.
“We’ve had more than our fair share of spaghetti with chili peppers and ‘nduja’ (spicy salami) sauce, let alone pizza and all sorts of short pasta”, Anne tells the The Local.
“We love Italian cuisine, and we never thought we would get bored of it, but lately we often really crave what we had back in the UK – that is a wide selection of foreign foods and cuisines.
“We miss having the freedom of opting for Mexican, Indonesian and Indian, around here you can’t even find a real Chinese restaurant unless you drive to the coast.”
In slightly bigger villages near Cinquefrondi there is sometimes a mixed offer of pizza and kebab in bars run by immigrants, but that’s about it, adds her husband.
In Sambuca di Sicilia, for instance, where the one-euro homes frenzy has lured many expats, alongside traditional taverns there’s just one pizzeria that also makes kebab-style food.
While in Mussomeli, another village in Sicily where cheap homes have attracted foreigners, a local restaurant has started to offer pizza and kebab, and also cheesecake. But that’s usually about as ‘varied’ as it gets in small-town Italy when it comes to food.
In rural Calabria however, one American couple recently opened an American restaurant to cater to local clientele and let them discover original American foods such as Cape Cod-style lobster rolls, onion rings and chicken wings.
Shannon Sciarretta and her partner Felipe da Silva launched ‘The Fig’ in the unknown village of Santa Domenica Talao.
Shannon has Italian origins and grew up eating Italian iconic dishes, but when she then spent her university years in Rome, she realised how very little availability there was of other cuisines, even in the Eternal City.
“It just struck me how there’s very little variety available in Italy when it comes to foreign foods or cuisines,” she says.
“So the idea of serving in Italy non-traditional stuff was always on my mind, and when we decided to move to Calabria, we thought it would be great to have locals taste our favourite American dishes because I think cuisine is a means of communication between different cultures”, says Shannon.
In fact, nearly all The Fig’s clientele is native, as villagers have been won over by its US-style cuisine.
I understand how foreigners can get bored eating always the same Italian food, but on the other hand, I am glad that Italy in its entirety is not yet such a globalized, cosmopolitan country where you can find Indonesian or Mexican food anywhere.
We like to stay attached to our local culinary traditions, which I hope will not die out easily.
lol, the only food I like is in Italy so i,m pleased they dont have all the rubbish that we eat here in the UK.
We have a flat in Tremezzo on Lake Como and we spend a lot of time there. I’m a very picky eater and can’t eat anything spicy and I don’t care for PASTA ( I know … I’m weird). I have to bring a lot of food with me when I’m going to be there for long periods of time. I agree I’m glad that Italy isn’t as globalized as the rest of the world but it’s a huge problem for me. As an American Texan my favorite food is Mexican so I can get most of what I need to cook it there but it’s definitely a pain ! If we ever decide to live there permanently I’ll have to get a freezer for my garage and continually fill it with food from home…lol. Perhaps I’ll have to open an American style restaurant like was mentioned in the other comments.
I don’t know why people would expect to find an array of international cuisine in a small Calabrian mountain village. At any rate there are at least two Japanese restaurants in the relatively nearby port of Gioia Tauro.
Personally I’m just grateful that even in the most remote places in Italy, the local cuisine and wine will be fantastic—and cheap. That can’t be said of every small town in America, which these days might only have fast food chains.
It seems to me that these complaining Americans or Brits think that pasta is all there is. Shame. Italian food is nr one in the world and I am so happy to avoid all these mediocre fat burgers with fries or kidney pies. And if I want good Indian stuff, which I like, I can travel elsewhere. Long live the Italian food! (I am from Sweden. We are inferior here, too)
Italian food is far from boring and varies so much from region to region and as a regular visitor to Italy, I am thankful it hasn’t been inundated with food from other cultures. Recently returned from a holiday in Italy and noticed there were more foreign foods on offer since the last visit, especially in Rome. Can only hope they don’t end up overwhelming the cities and towns. Why move to a village knowing there were only Italian restaurants, then complain?
Even sitting in Milan, I must admit being tired of Italian food after a year and half. It’s not necessarily that it’s bland but that it’s fundamentally a very limited palate – carbs, similar flavour profiles, lack of spices. Coming from a Korean background especially, it’s quite bland. To be fair, Turkish, Indian, etc. are much more flavourful to my palate but I suspect inedible to many people here.