On The Insatiable Global Hunger For Italian Cuisine

by David Farley on

Does the world really need another Italian restaurant? Apparently, yes. Every time an Italian restaurant opens up in New York City, I like to think that somewhere in the universe a puppy dog is wrapped in prosciutto, stuck with a giant toothpick and eaten. Well, not really. But as a denizen of the Big Apple, I’m continually amazed by the insatiable appetite New Yorkers have for Italian food. There’s an Italian restaurant on nearly every block in the city. Or so it seems.

But it’s not just New York. It’s the entire United States. It’s the entire planet, really. It wasn’t always this way. Italian food outside of Italy was southern Italian fare that morphed into Italian-American fare, the now generally maligned cuisine that is often perceived as sloppy and goopy and unsophisticated. And before World War II, big cities in North America were sprinkled with Italian restaurants here and there. Pizzerias were blue-color taverns but the pizza pie hadn’t really caught on yet.

But all that’s changed, of course, as Italian restaurants have become nearly ubiquitous on the American dining landscape. Just how did Italian food conquer the world (to reference the title of a recent book on the subject)?To find out, I went to Eataly, the ultimate response to the world’s insatiable hunger for all things Italian; that 50,000-square-foot behemoth in New York City – and, soon, Chicago, and god knows where else. It was on one recent night when a group of well-known Italian (and Italian-American) chefs were gathering for an event called Identità.

“Italian food was born in the home,” said Oscar Farinetti, the founder of the Eataly empire. “Unlike, say, French cuisine, which was born in restaurants. For this reason, Italian is replicable. I can’t make, for example, foie gras in my house. But I can make spaghetti carbonara.”

I rarely eat something in a restaurant I can make at home. And I don’t think I’m too anomalous in this attitude. So Farinetta’s point explains the popularity of Italian food, in general, and Eataly, in particular. But not really the legion of Italian restaurants in the United States and around the world.

“Who doesn’t like Italian food?” Chef Mario Batali asked, rhetorically. “It appeals to all that is good and stylistic about Italy. And it costs a lot less than a Maserati.” Gina DiPalma, the pastry chef at Batali’s flagship restaurant, Babbo, echoed her bosses point: “Italy belongs to the world,” she said. “With all the great art and fashion and style that has originated from there, it makes sense that Italian food, too, would have such a huge global presence.”

Then she looked over her shoulder and pointed to Batali. “That guy is the real reason Italian food is so popular outside of Italy. Or at least in the States.” She went on to say that when they first opened Babbo 15 years ago they couldn’t get things like farro and guanciale, which now are fairly common in most supermarkets.

It was then that Massimo Bottura, chef of La Francescana in Modena and number five on the influential World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, jumped into the conversation. “Italian food really matches the modern palate and the way we like to eat now. There’s no excessive butter or heavy cream. Not a lot of fat.” And then he insisted I quote him on something “Italian food is actually quite healthy.”

I lived in Italy for two years and I didn’t see a lot of obese people in the way that one does when you’re in the land of processed foods (i.e. the United States). And that’s saying a lot
considering Italians are obsessed with food.

“When I lived in Italy,” DiPalma said, “I’d be checking out at the supermarket and the cashier would ask what I’m planning on making for dinner tonight. No one would ever ask that here. I even once got a great recipe from my garbage man.”

“We need to fall in love with Italy all over again,” added Bottura. I looked around at all the happy people eating at the biggest Italian food superstore the world has seen and realized that I think we’re already in love with Italy.

The New New Orleans: On The Horizon, Even More Change

by Micheline Maynard on

Ask anyone in New Orleans what they’d like to see happen in their city, and you’ll get a long list of suggestions. Some think crime is the top priority. Others want grocery stores. Some want top quality public schools, and others seek private schools that won’t cost an arm and a leg.

The New New Orleans has far more room to grow and evolve, and developers are already talking about opportunities beyond Freret Street and the Municipal Auditorium.

Two areas come up most often. One is O.C. Haley Boulevard, which sits in a traditionally black and Jewish neighborhood called Central City. The boulevard, named for civil rights activist Oretha Castle Haley, who founded the New Orleans chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, is being called The Next Freret. It has attracted a boxing gym that used to be part of Freret, and it will be the home of the new Southern Food and Beverage Museum.

The avenue boasts grand buildings, many still empty, with plenty of space for developers to launch major projects. It is attracting some of the same supporters and investors who helped Freret come back to life.

Another area that is garnering attention is St. Claude Avenue, which runs through the Bywater, a neighborhood that sits not far from the French Quarter and adjacent to the Marigny. It’s known for an art scene, dive bars and the makings of gentrification, although it remains undeniably funky.Beyond neighborhoods, however, what will guarantee the success of the New New Orleans is the people who commit to it. One of them is Alon Shaya, fast becoming recognized as one of the city’s rising star chefs.

Shaya runs Domenica, a rustic Italian restaurant launched by veteran chef John Besh’s restaurant group. It opened in 2009, steps from Canal Street in the Roosevelt Hotel, the former Fairmont Hotel that itself underwent a post-Katrina renovation. (This month, it was named New Orleans’ restaurant of the year by Eater NOLA.)

Shaya is about as non-native as a New Orleanian can get. He’s Israeli, and has worked everywhere from Philadelphia to Las Vegas to St. Louis. He wound up in New Orleans to work in a restaurant that Besh opened in Harrah’s Casino. Before Domenica opened, Shaya spent a year in Italy on his own dime, cooking and learning various Italian cuisines, before returning to set up his own kitchen.

The city has clearly worked its way into his heart. “When I came to New Orleans, I didn’t realize it was going to be my last stop,” Shaya says. “Katrina sealed the deal for me. I really felt like I could make a difference.”

With restaurants devastated by the storm, chefs set out across the city to cook for recovery workers. Shaya was part of a team cooking for the workers who were rebuilding Willie Mae’s Scotch House, the legendary restaurant in the city’s seventh ward known for its fried chicken.

The construction, which cost $200,000 and was paid for with private funds, was spearheaded by the Southern Foodways Association, which sent volunteers from across the country, led by chef John Currence of City Grocery in Oxford, Miss.

“I felt like I was needed for the first time,” Shaya says, “by somebody who didn’t know who I was.”

The restaurant business in New Orleans became part of the healing process for many residents left without power and waiting for their homes to be fixed. “What else is there to do? Absolutely nothing, except go to a restaurant,” Shaya says.

He saw a much smaller version play out this summer, when Hurricane Isaac tore through the city. On the Thursday after the storm, 850 customers poured into Domenica, which was one of the few places that had power and an ample supply of ingredients.

But as he has become part of New Orleans, Shaya is also bringing his own background to the food he serves its residents and visitors. Gradually, he’s revising some of his menu to include Middle Eastern touches, and he thinks customers are ready for the changes.

“Young chefs are going out and cooking what means something to them,” Shaya says. “People aren’t resting on their laurels any more. What would have been ambitious five years ago is now expected.”

In a sense, that describes the New New Orleans, too.

For more on the New New Orleans, click here.

[Photo credits: Micheline Maynard]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Don’t Take Your Thanksgiving Turkey For Granted

by Dave Seminara on

For some Americans living overseas, finding a Thanksgiving turkey can be an ordeal. Not every American eats turkey on Thanksgiving Day, but when you live outside the country, these kinds of cherished American traditions can take on a sense of heightened importance to the point where re-creating an American style Thanksgiving dinner, even if you’re in Dushanbe or Khartoum, becomes an obsession.

My wife was the Community Liaison Officer, a job that some have described as a sort of cruise director, at the U.S. Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, and finding turkeys there fell under her vague job description since it was considered a “morale issue.” Americans take for granted the ability to walk into any grocery store in the country and get what they need for a Thanksgiving dinner in ten minutes, but in many parts of the world, it can be a serious scavenger hunt to get the items you need.One year, when I was posted in Trinidad, I spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for Karo syrup for a pecan pie recipe. (I had no idea at the time that other recipes don’t require it) I must have visited every store in Port of Spain before I finally found a bottle and felt as though I’d scored a golden ticket for Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) and their family members have one luxury that most expats don’t – the ability to order products online and have them shipped to a U.S. address. Those who are at posts with an APO address can get things quickly, but everyone else has to wait anywhere from a week to a few weeks or more to get their mail. But no matter how you slice it, you still can’t order a turkey on Amazon.com.

At the time we lived there, it was impossible to find turkeys for sale in Macedonia, and, unlike larger posts, we didn’t have a PX or a commissary that sold them, so my wife had to do some detective work and ultimately found a way to get birds from a military base in Kosovo and have them trucked down to Macedonia. It wasn’t as simple as driving over to the local Safeway but we probably appreciated them more.

With a little effort, expats can usually cobble together some semblance of a Thanksgiving meal but the hardest part of being overseas is having to spend the holiday season away from family and loved ones. I arrived at overseas posts for the first time shortly before Thanksgiving on three occasions: Skopje, Macedonia, Port of Spain, Trinidad, and Budapest, Hungary, and it’s always a little odd to arrive at a new post without any of your household effects or cookware before a holiday like Thanksgiving.

Even if you’re the most repellant jerk in the world, someone will invite you to Thanksgiving dinner. At some posts, the Ambassador will invite singles, newcomers and other strays to dinner and in others, people just informally make sure that no one is home alone without access to turkey meat unless they want to be.

In a way, it’s kind of a remarkable thing the way FSOs host fellow colleagues they barely know for this really important family holiday. Can you imagine having Thanksgiving dinner with a work colleague you barely know in the U.S.? We had kind souls host us in Port of Spain and Budapest and, in our first year in Skopje, I went to a meal hosted by the Ambassador. On other occasions, we introduced local friends to our favorite American holiday.

We were grateful for the invites we got, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it can be a little depressing to spend Thanksgiving with a collection of people you don’t know well. No matter how good the company is, you can’t help but wish you were with your real family, rather than your Foreign Service one, which can feel very much like what I imagine a foster home experience is like. And I never had to serve in a combat zone, where Thanksgiving dinner means waiting in a buffet line with a tray.

There are lots of advantages to the Foreign Service lifestyle but being away from family members during holidays and important occasions is probably the biggest drawback. Those of us who are fortunate to be with family members and near readily available dead turkeys this year should raise a glass and toast members of the Foreign Service, the military and every other American that’s serving their country and dealing with ad-hoc bird meat and improvised company this year.

Read more from “A Traveler In The Foreign Service”

[Photo credit: US Army Africa on Flickr]

Other Countries A US President Has Never Visited

by Chris Owen on

President Barack Obama will land in Myanmar (aka Burma) this week, a first-time visit for any President of the United States. Never mind that Myanmar is best known as a brutal dictatorship, not exactly in line with U.S. foreign policy. Disregard any political or geographically strategic reasons for befriending Myanmar. Today, this is all about the President being the first to visit Myanmar and the trip begs the question: “So are there other countries that no sitting U.S. President has ever visited?”

Out of the 190+ countries in the world, just 113 of them have been visited by a President of the United States, according to the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Historian.

Countries not visited include close-by neighbor the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, St Kitts, St Lucia and assorted tiny island-nations. Understandable, we would probably view a visit to the harmless Seychelles as a taxpayer-paid vacation anyway.

On the continent of Africa, more nations have not been visited than have been by a U.S. President. Again, probably not a lot of strategic reasons to stop by.But some big-name countries we might think that some President, somewhere along the way, might have visited; not one has.

  • Monaco, the second smallest country/monarchy in the world and the most densely populated country in the world boasts the world-famous Monte Carlo Casino.
  • Algeria, in northern Africa, famous for its vast Sahara in the south..
  • Nepal- famous for eight of the world’s ten tallest mountains. No visit.

Armenia is a country one might think worthy of a trip by any standards. Bordered by Turkey to the west, Azerbaijan to the east, Georgia to the north and Iran to the south, Armenia does seem to have a strategic location. Still, no visit.

Presidential travel takes any given sitting head of the free world to countries all over the planet on visits of good will. Meeting face to face with world leaders, attending meetings and spreading good old American spirit around when they can, Presidents are a big ticket when they come to town, along with Air Force One and more as we see in this video


Oh, and that trip to Myanmar? While President Obama is the first U.S. President to visit, he’s not the first Obama. The president’s grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was a cook in World War II for a British army captain stationed in what was then called Burma.

[Photo Credit: Flickr user 0ystercatcher]

Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail: A Pilgrimage To The Maker’s Mark Distillery

by Dave Seminara on

I’m not much of a bourbon connoisseur. In fact, before a recent road trip to Kentucky where 95% of the world’s bourbon is made, I had no idea what distinguished bourbon from regular old whiskey. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do, so I decided to visit the Maker’s Mark Distillery, reputedly one of the best stops on Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail.

The distillery is a 25-minute drive, along a windy country road that dips and turns along a pastoral landscape from Bardstown, a distinctive small town named the “most beautiful small town in America” by USA Today this year. Along the way we passed some pitch-black Maker’s Mark warehouses that resembled a disused prison complex and one of them reassured us that we were just three miles away from some sweet Kentucky bourbon.
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The distillery is set across a large complex that makes for a nice walk on a sunny day. There are a host of buildings, each painted dark brown and adorned with shutters the same shade of red as Maker’s Marks distinctive red wax bottle seals, which are hand dipped on the premises. (You can buy and dip your own bottle in the gift shop.)


The tour used to be free, but it now costs $7, which is still a bargain considering the fact they offer guests a chance to sample three bourbons and learn about a product that’s a deeply entrenched part of Kentucky’s culture.

The Samuels family, which founded Maker’s Mark, and scores of other Scotch-Irish distillers, fled to Kentucky from Pennsylvania after George Washington imposed a whiskey tax in 1791, sparking the Whiskey Rebellion. The whiskey tax went uncollected in Kentucky, then a frontier state, as no one had the will to enforce the law or prosecute those who ignored it.

Our tour guide, Jacqueline, told us that a nearby lake served as the base for the product.




“Why are there so many successful bourbon distilleries in the state of Kentucky?” she asked. “Here in a six county radius, we happen to sit on top of a very rich limestone shelf, that limestone filters our water making it iron free and calcium rich. Perfect for distilling whiskey with.”

And what makes bourbon different from regular whiskey?
To call it a bourbon whiskey it must have at least 51% corn, in the recipe – Maker’s Mark uses 70%. It must also consist of only grain, yeast and water, with no artificial flavors or colors; it has to be aged for at least two years in new, charred, oak barrels; and it has to be distilled at no more than 160 proof, barreled at no more than 125 proof and bottled at at least 80 proof.

Many of the technical details went over our heads, but we enjoyed having the opportunity to dip our hands in the vats in the fermentation room and were stoked to have a chance to sample three of their products: the 90 proof Maker’s White, which is only available at the distillery (thank God), regular Marker’s Mark and Maker’s 46, which Jacqueline described as “bourbon on steroids.”


We were instructed to taste the Maker’s White first and for good reason – the stuff is nasty.

“I like to look at all your faces as you’re tasting the Maker’s White,” Jacqueline said. “I can tell if you’ve had moonshine before, you know the Maker’s White isn’t that bad.”


But the Maker’s Mark and the Maker’s 46 were complex, with long, sweet, smooth finishes that lingered on the front of the tongue for a long time. I felt like I was still tasting them well after my insides were already warmed and my mouth felt a little numb, as though I’d just gotten some Novocain at the dentist. But on the way out, rather than getting a toothbrush and some floss, we were given a nice piece of chocolate – a sweet ending to our introduction to the world of Kentucky bourbon.



[Photos by Dave Seminara]