Seriously: you’d better not eat these things in Italy
Even in the country with the best cuisine in the world, there are things you’d better not eat because they simply aren’t tasty. I have to say it took quite a while for this list to become viable. Because, honestly, there aren’t many disgusting things. But please do yourself a favor and just don’t eat these things. Or eat them somewhere else. Just not in Italy, according to our colleague Minne from Italiamo.
Bruschetta with tomato
This obviously depends on where you eat it, but I find our ‘Dutchified’ version of bruschetta many times tastier than the kind you get in Italy. In the Netherlands, bruschetta is often made with garlic, fresh basil, olive oil and salt. In Italy, bruschetta is made with toasted stale bread (sometimes not even toasted) with tomato and, if you’re lucky, some olive oil. Sometimes you even get a whole tomato with a little knife and some bread. The idea behind Italian tomato bruschetta is to keep it as simple as possible, but it could be tastier.
Bread
Focaccia is fantastic, and you can buy ‘okay’-quality bread from bakers in Italy, but it isn’t easy to get truly delicious bread in Italy. Or perhaps bread is simply a completely different field in Italy than in the Netherlands. Its shelf life is much shorter, which in itself may say something about the purity of the ingredients, but it makes the bread less flavorful, difficult to slice and therefore really tough after two days.
Sushi
Although Italians love sushi and there are certainly places where it’s not too bad, eating sushi in Italy is not the best idea ever. There’s one ingredient that Italians, oddly enough, associate with sushi: cream cheese. Cream cheese is added to every maki, nigiri or inside-out roll, whether inside or on top. And, to make matters worse, there’s often some kind of strawberry or mango as well. Simply combined with salmon, tuna, avocado or cucumber, too. There’s even sushipizza. Ugh.
Fries
In the Netherlands, we’re pretty spoiled when it comes to fries. After all, you don’t often find crispy, golden-yellow, salty, well-fried fries in Italy. Usually, they’re rather limp and flavorless. Mayonnaise and ketchup on the side aren’t standard. Patate al forno, or oven-roasted potatoes, offer more satisfaction in a restaurant than fries. And here too: pizza with fries—but that’s actually a very good idea (I’ll explain that here).
Salads
Salads in Italy are generally not very exciting; usually, they consist of a few lettuce leaves, tomato and some grated carrot. Then you get to finish it yourself with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt. If you’re lucky, there’s some mozzarella or a stray corn kernel in it as well, but that’s about it.
Butter
The inattentive butter user may not immediately notice that butter is considerably less tasty in Italy than in the Netherlands (or France, naturally), but it’s true nonetheless. Butter is hardly used in Italian cuisine, so it could well be that priorities lay elsewhere. The ‘standard’ Italian butter is rather crumbly and hard. And flavorless.
Read also:
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Source: Italiamo
