Food Fight: Why Carbonara has caused a row between America and Italy

America and Italy are at loggerheads – over a classic pasta dish. Italians are upset after an expert stated that carbonara – a dish typical of Rome and its surrounding Lazio region made with eggs, pork cheek (guanciale), pecorino cheese and pepper – is actually American. Adding spice to the row is the fact that the controversy comes just days after Rome attempted to have Italian cuisine added to the UNESCO list of cultural heritage. Let’s take a closer look at the food fight: What happened? Food expert Alberto Grandi created a stir by claiming that some of Italy’s most famous recipes have a ‘very brief history’. Grandi, a food historian at the University of Parma, wrote in La Repubblica that the “value and history” of Italian cuisine were surrounded by “misunderstandings”. Grandi, in an article in the Financial Times entitled Everything I, an Italian, thought I knew about Italian food is wrong said the dish actually came from Americans who were in Italy after the Second World War.

“Italian cuisine really is more American than it is Italian,” Grandi claimed.

“Maybe once a year we ate amatriciana [a tomato-based recipe with bacon], when we could afford to kill a pig. But I’d never heard of Carbonara before the war,” he told the newspaper. “The first recipe that was publicised is from 1953 in Chicago. Many Italians went to America, so practically all the cooking — all the Italian kitchen is Italo-American, " Grandi was quoted as saying by Euronews. “Many Italian classics from panettone to tiramisù are relatively recent inventions,” he further added. “For my father in the 1970s, pizza was just as exotic as sushi is for us today,” he told the newspaper. Yahoo quoted Italy’s national farmers association Coldiretti  as saying Grandi had launched a “surreal attack on the iconic dishes of Italian cuisine”. “On the basis of imaginative reconstructions, the most deeply rooted national culinary traditions are disputed,” the association said. “In essence, [he claims] the Americans have invented carbonara, and panettone and tiramisu are recent commercial products. Above all, [the interview] goes so far as to hypothesise about parmesan and the one produced in Wisconsin in the US – the homeland of fake ‘made in Italy’ cheeses.” Deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini added “experts and newspapers are envious of our tastes and beauty”. But Grandi remained undeterred. The Evening Standard quoted Grandi as saying the row was “a nationalistic controversy” and that some had even alleged that he was part of an “anti-Italian conspiracy”.

“I don’t understand why many attack me,” Grandi said.

“I don’t question the quality of Italian food or products, I reconstruct the history of these dishes in a historical and philologically correct way. With my studies I have shown that many preparations derive from the last 50 to 60 years of history and from interactions with the American culture.” This isn’t the first time the dish has caused controversy. In 2021, the “Smoky Tomato Carbonara” recipe in The New York Times’ cooking supplement, which included tomatoes and replaced pork cheek and pecorino with bacon and parmesan, led to a furore in Italy. Coldiretti at the time called the US recipe “a disturbing knockoff of the prestigious dish from Italian popular tradition,” and complained that carbonara was “one of the most disfigured Italian recipes”. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.