If you’ve ever been to a restaurant in the Little Italy neighborhood of any American city and sat down at a plaid tablecloth, there’s a good chance that the food you ordered wasn’t Italian. Rather, it most likely fell into a category of cuisine called “Italian-American.” Popular dishes like Chicken Parmesan, Baked Ziti, and basically the entire Olive Garden menu all fall into the Italian-American category, which focuses on dishes created by Italian immigrants using ingredients that are easily available in America.
“When Italians first started immigrating to the United States, most of them came from poor rural areas, and their cooking was low-ingredients, mostly vegetarian, and basically whatever they could get their hands on,” he explained. Gennaro Contaldois a London-based celebrity chef and cookbook author, best known as the mentor of Jamie Oliver during his Italian cooking studies. He explains that when Italian immigrants came to the United States and saw the abundance of ingredients available to them, “the cooking they learned back home began to change from ‘poor home cooking’ to richer, meatier dishes.”
To be clear, Italian-American food is enjoyed by many and many believe that this type of cuisine created by Italians in America is entirely true to Italian history, its creators and culture. Giuseppe Gentile, executive chef of L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele in Naples, Italy, and four U.S. locations in California and New York, also understands the appeal of Italian-American food, acknowledging that these dishes are “more comforting in some ways” than many dishes made in Italy itself.
But if you want to eat the way Italians do in their home country, it’s important to understand that Italian cooking follows very different rules than Italian-American cooking. “Italian cooking is all about freshness. We keep our recipes simple and we want our customers to taste the ingredients without masking them with heavy butter and cream,” he explains. Pietro GalloHe is executive chef and co-owner of Civico 1845 in San Diego.
Giuseppe GaetaGaeta, executive chef at Cipriani Las Vegas, also points out the importance of fresh, locally sourced ingredients in Italian cuisine. “We grew up eating what we grew, what we hunted and fished, and what was in the fields in season,” Gaeta says. “Using fresh ingredients allows for more flavor. Everything has a purpose.”
In contrast, Italian-American food is “loaded with garlic, sauce, cheese and the portions are quite large.” Fabio PizzigoniExecutive chef at Ambrogio15 in Phoenix. Fabio VivianiThe “Top Chef” alumnus and prolific restaurateur noted that “a lot of Americans still expect their pasta to be smothered in a lot of sauce, but in Italy, the pasta is the star of the dish, and the sauce is just there to enhance the flavor of the pasta.”
If you visit any Italian restaurant in the U.S., Italian chefs will agree that certain menu items either don’t live up to their Italian origins or don’t exist in Italy at all (and therefore don’t lend themselves to authentic Italian cuisine). The following seven dishes are prime examples.
