The “Distorted” Interpretations of Italian Cuisine Around The World That Make Italians Go Mad!

Raise your hand if, for convenience and convenience, during a trip abroad you have stopped to eat in an Italian restaurant. There are those who, in that circumstance, are tired of the new flavors and would like something more "familiar" or those who are interested in seeing how local chefs reinterpret traditional dishes. There are many food and travel bloggers who gain an audience by proposing the most obvious blunders of some Italian dishes famous abroad. We are therefore ready to dive into a sea of ​​carbonara with cream, pasta with ketchup or with chicken.

Why Italian Cuisine is Misinterpreted Abroad

The question we most often ask ourselves when we eat Italian abroad is to understand whether the interpretation of their dishes is conscious or whether local chefs are betraying their culinary identity. What foreign chefs do is in fact due to a certain inability in preparation or a lack of thorough knowledge of the recipes which makes the dishes, as we see them in restaurants abroad, reinterpreted in a "distorted" way.

Poorly reproducing Italian cuisine abroad is a widespread phenomenon and often due to a series of factors, including adaptation to local tastes, the availability of ingredients and a superficial understanding of culinary traditions. In addition, many restaurants modify Italian recipes to make them more appealing to the local palate. This involves the addition of non-traditional ingredients that alter the flavor.

Pasta With Ketchup? The Examples of Olive Garden and Saiyzeria

As we have just said, very often it is the missing Italian product or element that makes the difference in those recipes. According to a recent report by Coldiretti, almost three out of four Italians (73%) have found themselves in front of a "distorted" dish of their cuisine during a trip abroad.

From the United States to Japan: restaurant chains that "pass themselves off" as Italian but in reality only offer poorly executed imitations. A practical example could be that of Olive Garden and Saizeriya. The first is located here in the U.S. and is actually a chain of Italian restaurants. The proposal does not reflect tradition at all and on the menu you can find dishes that remotely recall Italian cuisine. Fried lasagna, gnocchi with cream and pasta with chicken and salad or even carbonara with shrimp and chicken: Olive Garden is an example of how Italian cuisine can be adapted and marketed for a specific market, moving away from authenticity.

Also worth mentioning is Saizeriya, another chain of Italian restaurants but in Japan. Be careful, it is fair to say that in Italy there are some Japanese restaurants where traditional Japanese cuisine is strongly misinterpreted (e.g. sushi with cream cheese and strawberries) but Saizeriya, in the Land of the Rising Sun, is super popular. Low and convenient prices, the dishes use cheap ingredients and simplified preparations to lower the cost. The result can be a version very distant from the flavors and quality of real Italian cuisine.

The main dishes? Spaghetti "Siciliani" with tarako (cod roe) and nori seaweed  and the very famous spaghetti napolitana. Called like this, they might seem like the typical scarpariello so dear to Neapolitan tradition but we are wrong: it is pasta (overcooked most of the time) with a generous addition of ketchup and "Parmigiano Reggiano Doc". A dish that almost seems like a reprisal against Italian cuisine for having sushi with avocado and French fries on the menus of themed restaurants . However, adding ketchup on pasta and passing it off as an Italian dish is something that is almost impossible to accept.