There Is No Such Thing as Italian Cuisine
A few years ago, I took a cooking class in Lecce, the sexiest little town south of Naples. They call it the Florence of the South for a reason – it has perfect cobbled walkways, and the center is completely built of limestone by law to preserve the integrity of the Centro (sort of how Jerusalem stone keeps the holy land feeling ancient). We made orecchiette with a couple of different flours. We made hyper-local sauces. The hospitality of the Leccesi is off the charts, as we lingered over wine and sweets long after the course should have ended. It felt close to an authentic experience despite the contrived nature of it all.
At one point, my teacher casually mentioned that about twenty minutes away there was a town where people spoke a different native language and cooked a cuisine that had nothing to do with Lecce. Not “a variation.” Not “a twist.” A different planet. And they guarded it the way Italians guard anything that matters: fiercely, lovingly, and with zero interest in your opinion. They were perfectly content in their own bubble, thanks.
That comment lodged itself in my brain because it’s basically Italy in miniature. I’ve traveled all twenty regions and eaten my way through the country’s wildly divergent gastronomic landscape. Rome’s four pastas. Napoli’s red-sauce religion. Risotto Milanese. Pesto alla Genovese. Sicilian caponata. Ragù Bolognese. On and on, forever. If you’re paying even a little attention (and you should), you notice something fast: every region has its own canon of dishes, often so specific you can’t find them anywhere else. Sometimes not even in the next town over.
And yet, outside of Italy, we take this riot of micro-cuisines and shove it into one tiny bucket labeled: Italian Cuisine.
When you imagine “Italian,” what do you see? Spaghetti and meatballs? A lasagna the size of a cinder block? Pizza, cannoli, gelato? Or do you jump to mortadella, prosciutto, arancini, risotto, pesto, carbonara, polenta? That list is still a warm-up in a country that’s beyond obsessed with food. More importantly, it doesn’t all belong under one neat umbrella, no matter how badly a menu designer wants it to.
So yes, it’s fair to call a restaurant serving dishes from Italy “Italian.” But pretending there’s a monolithic Italian cuisine does a disservice to the thing that makes Italy Italy: the hyper-local, stubborn, deeply regional nature of how people eat.
If you want the short version: Italy is twenty regions that agreed to share a flag, but every locale has mostly unique food offerings and the locals will rarely will diverge out of their wheelhouse.
If you want the longer version, buckle up.
The Risorgimento: Italy’s Unification
Italy wasn’t even Italy until a little over 150 years ago. Before that, it was a patchwork of city-states, duchies, kingdoms, foreign occupations, and the occasional Pope with real estate ambitions. That patchwork created a dizzying array of local traditions and micro-regions, each doing its own thing with whatever grew nearby and whoever happened to invade them last.
To understand how we got “Italy,” we have to talk about the Risorgimento, the 19th-century movement that stitched together a bunch of independent states into a single nation. The official date of unification is 1861, though like all big family mergers, the emotional paperwork took much longer.
It was driven by revolutionary ideas, secret societies, and a cast of characters that reads like an HBO limited series: Garibaldi (the flamboyant general), Cavour (the strategic statesman), and Mazzini (the ideological dreamer). They shared a vision: unify the peninsula that had been carved up by foreign powers, local aristocrats, and the Vatican. HBO, are you listening?
For centuries, the north lived under Austrian influence, central regions were controlled by the Papal States, and the south was ruled by the Bourbon monarchy, among others. Add Sicily and Sardinia, each with their own languages and cultural DNA shaped by Greek, Arab, Spanish, Norman and more, and you can see why forging a cohesive national identity was like herding cats. Italian cats. The worst kind.
Here’s the key point: unification did not erase regional culinary traditions. Italy became one country on paper, but mountains, rivers, infrastructure, and stubborn local pride kept cuisines isolated and fiercely intact. The north leaned into butter and cream. The south worshipped olive oil and tomatoes. The center did what it always does: built a mythology around offal, humility, and genius.
There was never a moment where everyone said, “Hey, we’re one country now. Let’s standardize the lasagna recipe.” That would be un-Italian to the point of medical concern.
The Italian Brand
Once Italy became a single nation, the world locked eyes with the peninsula and didn’t blink. Italy had scenery, history, art, romance, chaos, and an effortless ability to make even a basic espresso look like a lifestyle decision.
A united Italy sparked an aspirational identity: La Dolce Vita. Film, fashion, design, and a newly polished national pride went global. Suddenly the world was sold this seductive picture of beautiful people in tailored clothes, zipping around on Vespas, sipping espresso in sun-dappled piazzas.
Underneath the glossy brochure, the old divides never really disappeared. The industrialized north, newly prosperous, often looked down on the south with an arrogance that’s been simmering for generations—sometimes literally branding it “Africa,” as if geography were a moral ranking system. Southerners, historically marginalized and economically squeezed, didn’t exactly send thank-you notes. The history is full of friction: regional contempt, political movements that flirted with autonomy/secession, and, back at unification, a brutal southern uprising that some historians describe in civil-war terms.
Then came immigration. Italians spread across the world and carried their traditions with them. Abroad, it was easy for outsiders to assume there was one “Italian way,” one cultural tapestry of perfect pasta, Tuscan hills, and romantic hand gestures.
But inside Italy, the fractal puzzle remained. Regional identity wasn’t some quaint detail. It was the operating system. It still is.
Regional Gastronomy
To appreciate Italy’s modern culinary landscape (and to absolutely enhance your travels - that’s why I write this shit), you have to stop thinking of the monolithic Italian Cuisine. By no means am I going to provide a comprehensive guide to all of it – that would take volumes, but to illustrate my point, let’s dive a little bit into some of the most notable regional specialties.
Sicily: A Cultural Mosaic on a Plate
Sicily is the southernmost, triangular gem getting punted by the Italian boot. It’s also a living encyclopedia of every culture that ever showed up and stayed for a while: Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Spanish.
One day you’re eating arancini (or arancine, depending on if you’re in Palermo or Catania). The next you’re deep in sweet-and-sour caponata. On the western coast, couscous shows up like it owns the place, because history says it kind of does.
Sicily isn’t “Italian food.” It’s a Mediterranean mash-up, stitched together over centuries. Same island, same nation, entirely different vibe.
Naples: The Red-Sauce Epicenter and Birth of Pizza
Slide over to Campania and you hit Naples, the city that has arguably shaped the global mental image of “Italian food” more than anywhere else. Why? Pizza and tomato sauce. The holy duo.
But it’s deeper than crust plus sauce. Naples was once the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It thrived on volcanic soil that produced tomatoes the world fell in love with, plus the daily bounty of the bay. Add sfogliatella and babà, and you get a cuisine that is loud, devotional, and wildly influential.
If your idea of “Italian” is a pot of tomato sauce muttering on a stove like a family secret, you’re basically worshipping at the Neapolitan altar. No shame. Just be aware you’re in one region’s church. What’s more, Neapolitan cuisine has had a similar impact throughout the rest of Italy. You can find puffy crusts pizzas in most regions in Italy, but nobody would be so bold as to label them as anything but Neapolitan.
Rome: Four Pastas and an Offal Personality
Rome greets you with its famed pasta quadrilogy: cacio e pepe, carbonara, gricia, amatriciana. Each is a masterclass in restraint. Pecorino. Pepper. Guanciale. Eggs. I’m always fascinated by how obsessed Romans are with these four dishes. Like I get it, they are amazing. I can eat them over and over. But Roman’s, these nut jobs eat these same dishes every freaking night, every week, every month, all their lives. They never seem to tire.
Then there’s Rome’s deep love affair with offal. Historically, the upper classes got the prime cuts. Working people got the rest, the quinto quarto (fifth quarter). That “rest” became dishes like trippa alla romana and coda alla vaccinara, which are proof that necessity plus time plus talent equals greatness.
Also, let’s be honest: most tourists didn’t know cacio e pepe existed until relatively recently. Romans were eating it forever. Visitors were being served spaghetti, ravioli, and lasagna because that’s what the outside world thought it was supposed to eat in Rome. Rome humored us. Rome was wrong to do so. Damn the plastic pasta displays, menu hawkers, and generic menus.
Puglia: THE RISING STAR
In Puglia, the heel of the geographic boot, you land in another culinary universe. As judgement of the South has relaxed, Puglia’s stunning landscape, meandering coast, and stellar cuisine has drawn northerners to take holidays here and build vacation homes. Endless olive groves, dairy cows pumping out the best burrata in the world, fresh seafood, unique pastas, and the aforemnetionedunbelievably charming people.
All over Puglia Nonas are cranking out zillions of orecchiette, and ear-shaped pasta that is ubiquitous. It’s served with a variety of sauces, but Orecchiette con le Cime di Rapa with bitter turnip tops is the most traditional. Puglia is also the home to taralli, caciocavallo, and a thousand other humble, perfect things.
My personal favorite is spaghetti all’assassina, “assassin’s spaghetti,” pan-fried until crispy in tomato sauce. It’s intense, singular, and uniquely tied to Bari. You used to only find it there. Now you can find it on TikTok, which is both inevitable and slightly tragic.
And then there’s Altamura, which still blows my mind. A tiny little hamlet on the way to Matera. Mention it to Italians and they’ll say, instantly, “Best bread in Italy.” That’s it. A town famous for bread and little else. And they’re right. The bread is stupid good.
Emilia-Romagna vs. Piemonte: The Heavyweight Title Fight
If you want to talk about culinary heavyweights, two regions loom large.
Emilia-Romagna is a juggernaut. Prosciutto di Parma. Balsamico from Modena. Parmigiano Reggiano. Tortellini. Tagliatelle. Lasagna. Ragù. This is food with laws. DOPs. and could easily be the hand’s down best food in Italy champ. Towns like Bologna, Modena and Parma are ardently proud of their accomplishments.
Right next door is Piemonte (Piedmont), equally legendary with a different kind of swagger. Tajarin. Agnolotti. White truffles from Alba that cost more than your first car. Serious wines (Barolo, Barbera). Gianduja. Hazelnuts that put Nutella on the map. This region is the Muhammad Ali to Emilia Romagna’s Tyson. It might have a deeper bag, but Tyson packs the punch.
Choosing a winner is a fool’s errand. I’m just grateful both exist and that my arteries have remained surprisingly cooperative.
Tuscany, Umbria, Liguria: More, More, More
We could do this forever, because Italy does this forever.
Tuscany is rustic, meat-forward, and proudly unbothered. Umbria is earthy, truffle-laced, and obsessed with wild boar. Liguria gives you pesto alla Genovese and focaccia that can make you emotional in a train station.
Yes, I know. ZOMG. I’m with you.
American Italian: Fuhgeddaboudit
Now for the elephant in the room: Italian-American cuisine. If you ask any Italian-Italian, they will scoff and laugh and tell you that Italian-American isn’t Italian food. And they would be correct. It’s influenced by its origins, but has evolved into something different.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, waves of Southern Italian immigrants brought recipes to the U.S. Ingredients changed. Economics changed. Availability changed. So they improvised. They adapted. They made sure nobody went hungry in the New World the way they had back home.
That’s how you get massive meatballs, chicken parm, garlic bread, and plates that could double as gym equipment. In Italy, garlic plays a supporting role. In America, it kicks down the door and demands top billing.
By the mid-20th century, the Italian-American restaurant became an icon. Red-checkered tablecloths. Giant portions. Spaghetti and meatballs as shorthand for “Italian,” even though that combination is more American than Roman. Fettuccine Alfredo exists in Italy, but the American version is nothing like it. Gabagool, fuggedaboutit.
And screw the Italians if they have a problem with this. The Italian-American dishes are beautiful in their own way. It’s comfort food with a real history and lives in the hearts and minds of every east coast Jewish family I know.
But let’s not pretend it’s the same thing as eating in Italy. It’s not. And that’s okay.
When in Rome…
I travel for a simple reason: I want a glimpse into how other cultures actually live. The longer I stay, the more detail comes into focus. Subtleties are the point.
Food is the most efficient lens we have. It’s cultural. Historical. Anthropological. Social. It tells you about commerce, tradition, pride, class, geography, and community. Understand how a culture eats and you understand a lot about that culture.
So the key to understanding Italy is embracing When in Rome. Do as the Romans do. I’ve made it an obsession to chase origin stories. I want all’assassina where it was invented and where it was perfected. I will drive three hours each way to eat Pepe in Grani’s pizza in the suburbs of Napoli because greatness rarely shows up conveniently off your itinerary.
I will stop at a roadside latteria in Puglia where a schoolgirl doing her homework pauses to open her family’s tiny cheese shop for just me, so I can buy the freshest-straight-from-the-cow’s-ass burrata you’ll ever taste. That’s not a metaphor. That’s the supply chain.
Now take “When in Rome” and expand it: When in… anywhere.
When we stop flattening Italy into a single “Italian Cuisine,” we can start appreciating regional cuisines the way they’re meant to be experienced: locally, specifically, with context. Same goes for Thailand, China, Japan, Spain, the U.S. Think global. Eat local.
And listen, I’m the first to admit chicken parm is my spirit animal. I’ll do crimes for a good parm. But that’s a New York / New Jersey (and Dana Tana’s in LA) dish. It’s not on menus in Florence.
And if you find it there, the best advice I can give is simple: move the fuck along. Go find a bowl of ribollita and eat it with the people who actually live there.