The Truth About Italian Food

Dining in Italy is more than just sustenance. It's a way of life that is meant to be savored, enjoyed, and never rushed. Even if they have a busy work day, Italians will have a three-course lunch and then head back to work. You won't see them doing a wild, gustatory, 30-minute dash at their desk. Dining in courses (small portions are key) is believed to be more civilized and healthier for digestion, and whether it's pranzo (lunch) or cena (dinner), there is a progression to the dishes served that is almost universal from region to region.

In Italy, lunch, not dinner, is the main meal. Dinner is usually light and will include simple dishes like a frittata with soup or salad. The big meal, served at midday, is on Sunday, when generations of the extended family gather together at the table and enjoy a full meal with multiple courses that are enjoyed over a long afternoon.

Here's a breakdown of the typical courses served for lunch and dinner. Not every course will be eaten every day, and even more food will be included for special occasions, but you can count on at least two or three being eaten regularly.

To start the meal, there is an antipasto, often a plate of local cheeses and salumi or a more elaborate display of pickled vegetables, crostini, or olives. Primo piatto is the first course, and depending on the region it will be risotto, polenta, or pasta (either fresh or dried), followed by secondo piatto, the second course. Secondo is what we would consider the main course since it's meat or fish accompanied by a contorno (side dish) that's often a verdura (vegetable) or a composed salad made with vegetables and other ingredients. Green salads come at the end of the meal, or can be served with contorni and the primo secondi. The salads are refreshingly simple, and cheese comes before dolci, the dessert course.

If you're an American in Italy and you think the pizza is different, wait until you order pasta. Pastas come in small portions and the waiters are confused when you order "classics." They want to know who Alfredo is and why you are ordering fettucini for him. Then you are confused because your fettucini arrives tossed with butter and Parmesan cheese and it's called "al burro." In fact, most of the pastas don't seem to have a lot of sauce or meat on them. Why? Because Italian cooks minimize the ingredients so you can taste and savor each item and appreciate the combination of ingredients in the dish.

So, what else is different about the food in Italy? First, bolognese sauce, or ragu alla bolognese, is a rich meat sauce from Bologna. This flavorful meat sauce is traditionally served over tagliatelle pasta or with baked lasagna and is never served over spaghetti. Ever. Spaghetti, which comes from southern Italy, is never served with polpetti (meatballs). In fact, polpetti aren't served with pasta at all, and they are never the size of a softball.

Don't expect to see shrimp scampi drowning in garlicky butter sauce over spaghetti. If you've been turned off by garlic clouds before, you'll appreciate the delicate touch of garlic that sometimes accompanies dishes. The list is longer, but you get the point: big helpings of meat don't get splashed over pasta.

Bread can tell you a lot about how Italians eat: from one region to the next, bread is as varied as the landscape. It's served with salami or cheese for an antipasto and as a crostini or bruschetta topped with fresh summer tomatoes. But bread isn't eaten throughout the meal, and it certainly isn't distractedly nibbled on between courses. It's generally served with the main course and salad, mostly because Italians love to "fare la scarpetta" ("do the little shoe"): clean up the sauce from the plate with a piece of bread.

But be forewarned, this is not considered appropriate in public or as a guest in someone's home. It's best to reserve honoring this Italian tradition at home or among friends you know a little better.

This tradition is centuries old. In places like Tuscany and Umbria, it's as much a way to clean your plate as it is a political statement revealing your social status. In both regions, they make a style of bread that doesn't contain salt. This kind of bread is a vestige of lean times when salt was hard to come by. It was so heavily taxed that people couldn't afford to use it in their bread or refused to in defiance of the exorbitant taxes. Just don't make a meal of the bread: it's a supporting cast member, not the star. Scarpetta improves the taste of the bread.

Make a visit to Italy and right away you notice a lot of the food, from lattes to pizza, seems to be from an alternate dimension. Italy was a collection of regions as distinct from each other as if they were independent nations. Lack of roadways and transportation kept each region insulated from other regions and reinforced the fierce loyalty to regions, cities, and small villages. Culturally, each region was an island with its own traditions. It wasn't until modernity and the end of World War II that knowledge of the regional cuisines spread. Eventually, foodstuffs from one region to the next migrated and shared their local foods with their fellow Italians.

Although pizza comes from Naples in Campania, it has migrated north and south and is now often served with toppings that reflect the local foods available. Americans can be confused by the staunch loyalty that still divides one region from the other. You know what pizza is, and you recognize pizza Margherita, but that's it. There are pizzas topped with potatoes, clams, corn, broccoli, sliced pears, and Gorgonzola blue cheese, but when you order pepperoni pizza, your pizza is topped with peppers ("peperone" in Italian), and people around you eat their pizzas with knives and forks.

Starbucks regulars will find that coffee in Italy is much more than a dash in and out for a paper cup of piping hot coffee with a paragraph-long name. Coffee, and its preparation and service, is like a complicated ballet with many dancers, acts, scenes, traditions, and pas de deux. You have to step lively and know your part or you will stumble, embarrass yourself, and maybe even offend someone if you get things wrong.

Stop ordering cappuccino anytime except the morning. It's a breakfast drink, it isn't served after noon, and it annoys the heck out of the Italians when you order it at lunch or dinner. Espresso is never called that: it's just un caffé. The first coffee in the morning is called a moka and doesn't contain chocolate. And don't expect to find lattes and complicated coffee drinks everywhere.

Instead, visit the beautiful traditional coffee houses that serve coffee like a sacred liquid in hallowed temples to caffeine. These architectural gems are antique relics complete with exquisite paneled salons, marble counters and floors, and coffee drinks served in fine china cups that reflect the luxurious quality of the revered drink. Career baristas create specialty coffees brewed to order that come in distinct cups based on the recipe. There is a language and litany of customs you need to learn before you order, but once you learn the code you'll be on your way to enjoying the true Italian way of life and eating.

Anytime you visit another country, it's helpful to have a culinary shorthand that can help you understand the cuisine and cooking traditions. In Italy, a quick way to do that is by learning which regions use olive oil for cooking and which ones use butter. Generally, you will find butter is used more in the northern regions and olive oil is more common in the southern ones, but some places use both together.

You will notice certain things are missing from the table and the service in Italian restaurants, starting with the basket of bread with butter that's almost obligatory in Italian restaurants in the U.S. Bread is not a starter, nor is it served with drizzles of balsamic vinegar or sprinkles of coarse black pepper or whatever silly thing restaurants are trying to convince us is authentically Italian. In Italy, butter and olive oil are used to cook with. In some regions, a small amount of olive oil is poured over the top of freshly cooked pasta to keep things moist and enhance the flavor of the dish. Don't look for little ramekins of butter or pitchers of olive oil on the table.