1. Top 10 Italian Foods & Meals
That Aren’t Italian At All

2. Intro
● Italians are more than a little sensitive
about their food but, honestly, who can
blame them? Seemingly every culture
continues to misrepresent their noble
Mediterranean cuisine with greasy, sugar-
laden, and highly processed poor substitutes,
not to mention the ridiculous Italian-ized
labels that contain some of the worst
attempts at the language ever seen. You
can cook, promote, and sell whatever you
want; just don t call it Italian when it s’ ’
clearly not.
●

3. 10 Italian Soda

4. 10.Italian Soda
● Italian soda is NOT found everywhere in Italy, as many
manufacturers claim on their websites. According to
specialists and their extensive research, the birth of
United States coincided with the introduction of soft
drinks, a product already popular in the US by the
early 1800′s. So why the Italy thing? It seems a couple
businessmen, Ezilda and Rinaldo Torre, introduced a
variety of syrups to North Beach around 1925, and
pretended they were taken from authentic,
handwritten, Italian recipes. More than likely, they
were inspired by acqua e menta, an Italian summer
drink prepared by mixing mint syrup with still water.
But that’s not soda, is it? Aranciata, gassosa, cedrata
and chinotto are some of the country’s signature soft
drinks, so try those instead.

5. 9 Italian Dressing

6. 9. Italian Dressing
● Italian salad dressings are incredibly popular in the United
States and Canada, but Italians have their own particular way of
seasoning a salad, a way nicely summed up by an old saying
from Alexandre Dumas, from one of the earliest and greatest
works on food ever published, the Grand Dictionnaire de
Cuisine: “a salad dressing requires a spendthrift for oil, a judge
for salt, a miser for vinegar, and a madman to mix them.” And
we couldn’t agree more. Native Italians don’t buy bottled
dressings. The Mediterranean gastronomical culture is all about
fresh and healthy ingredients: simple food, properly spiced, and
cooked with passion and care. Why add an arsenal of sugars,
salts, fats, fake flavors, colors and questionable ingredients,
when it’s so easy to make your own dressing? And if you’re in
Italy, but don’t have access to a madman, fret not: salads are
often served unseasoned in Italy, but you’ll always find olive oil,
balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper on the table to prepare a mix
that suits your personal taste.

7. 8. Garlic Bread

8. 8.Garlic Bread
● French bread smeared with butter and sprinkled with garlic
powder, salt, and dried oregano or basil is not an Italian
custom, no matter how many marketers say otherwise.
Garlic bread is simply the American commercial version of
bruschetta classica. To celebrate the olive harvest, Italian
farmers toast a chunky slide of country-style bread over
the fireplace, rub it with a clove of garlic while it’s still hot,
and then brush it with fresh olive oil on both sides. A
sprinkle of salt, and the bruschetta is ready! That’s the
classic recipe, but variations are abound: bruschetta al
pomodoro e basilico (with chopped tomatoes and fresh
basil); bruschetta ai peperoni (with peppers), bruschetta
con melanzane (with eggplants) and so on. All of which
beat a frozen piece of bread in a box by miles and miles
●

9. 7. Pepperoni/Italian Chicken Pizza

10. 7. Pepperoni/Italian Chicken Pizza
● “Italian” chicken pizza and pepperoni pizza are
two of the many delicious varieties of pizza that
you absolutely won’t find in Italy. You won’t
even find pepperoni there, as the word is simply
bastardized version of the Italian word peperoni
(bell peppers). Pepperoni (written with double
p’s) is an air-dried spicy sausage. Order a
pepperoni pizza in Italy, and you’ll most likely
get a pizza topped with sweet peppers.
Pepperoni pizza, the way we know it, is an
American invention from 1919 or so, when
Italian-American restaurants, pizzerias, and
butcher shops began to flourish in America.

11. 6. Pasta Primavera

12. 6.Pasta Primavera
● Despite its name, pasta primavera is not of
Italian origin. The dish was created in the early
1970′s in Le Cirque NYC, one of the top
restaurants of the international haute cuisine
scene. It all started in 1973 when Sirio
Maccioni, founder of Le Cirque, and Jean
Vernges, a classically trained French Chef and
co-founder of Le Cirque, visited artist Edward
Giobbi, and was intrigued by his mixture of
vegetables and pasta. Vergnes discussed the
concept with fellow French chef Jean Louis.
Vergnes’ wish was to use fresh veggies like
asparagus, zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes,
and string beans.

13. 5.Caesar Salad

14. 5.Caesar Salad
● An ongoing debate surrounds this delicious
salad. One thing is for sure, it isn’t Italian. Most
culinary historians credit Caesar Cardini with
the authentic version. Caesar Cardini and his
brother Alessandro moved from Milan to San
Diego after World War I, and decided to open a
restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. Their signature
Parmesan-and-crouton-based salad soon
became very fashionable among Hollywood
celebrities, and somehow earned a reputation
for being an authentic Italian dish.

15. 4.Chicken Parmesan

16. 4.Chicken Parmesan
● Chicken Parmesan, despite the very Italian
name, is as American as the hot dog. There’s
no authentic Italian recipe for combining pasta
with chicken, and the two are always served as
different courses. In fact, up until recent rises in
poultry production, chicken meat was rarely
eaten in Italy. According to a 1956 record from
the Italian National Union of Agriculture, the
average Italian ate less than 5 pounds of
poultry per year at the time
●

17. 3.Macaroni & Cheese

18. 3.Macaroni&Cheese
● Establishing the origin of this dish is more
complicated than it seems. It’s a delicious plate,
but it isn’t Italian. Bechamel, the mother of all
white sauces and one of the mainstays of
French cuisine, is the base of the classic mac &
cheese recipe. Some claim that maccheroni,
prepared with various sauces, was a very
popular dish in Paris during the 18th century.
Last we checked, France is not Italy.
●

19. 2.Fettuccine Alfredo

20. 2.Fettuccine Alfredo
● If you are planning to visit Italy, and can’t wait to eat
the famous Fettuccine Alfredo, I’m afraid I have some
bad news for you. Fettuccine Alfredo, Shrimp Alfredo,
Chicken Alfredo, or any other dish named after Alfredo
di Lelio doesn’t exist anywhere in Italy, except for one
place in Rome that Italians don’t actually like. It all
began there, almost one hundred years ago, at a
restaurant owned by Alfredo di Lelio, whose wife
experienced some problems during pregnancy,
including loss of appetite. Remember when your mom
gave you chicken soup or toast when you had an
upset stomach? Well, Italians eat plain pasta with a
little bit of butter and Parmesan when they can’t keep
anything down. It’s that same remedy that worked also
for Alfredo’s wife.

21. And Lastly......

22. 1.Spaghetti Bolognese

23. 1. Spaghetti Bolognese
● There’s nothing Italian about this dish, and nothing Bolognese either.
The pasta and the classic sauce come from two completely different
cultures. Emilia Romagna, a food lover’s paradise, is a region of
Northern Italy. Its capital is Bologna. The Bolognese sauce (ragù alla
Bolognese) is a typical Emilian dish, but spaghetti was a southern
Italian staple. Emilians actually serve ragù with tagliatelle, the region’s
signature pasta. Combining these two in a single dish, though
apparently quite marketable, is a big no-no. Why? Because spaghetti
is too thin to hold the rich sauce. Spaghetti Bolognese, the
Frankenstein dish we know today, is not even served with the classic
Bolognese sauce, but rather some watered-down version that’s
easier for spaghetti to handle. The most authentic sauce recipe is the
one documented by the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, and
subsequently recorded by Bologna’s Chamber of Commerce. The
official recipe limits the ingredients to beef, pancetta, carrots, celery
stalks, onions, tomato paste, white wine and milk.
●

24. Thank You For Watching