Whut: does pasta carbonara actually come from America?

Carbonara is undoubtedly one of our favorite Italian dishes. But wait a minute: pasta alla carbonara is not an Italian dish at all. No, according to the (note well) Italian academic Alberto Grandi, carbonara would be American. And to make matters worse – ‘Don't touch our culinary heritage!’ say all Italians – he drags the Italian Panettone and Parmigiano through the mud as well. Colleague Sophie from Italiamo dove into this sensitive issue. Read and shudder.

Italian Classics
The Italians are angry. Very angry. Because if you touch their culinary heritage, you will have a problem with them. And that is what the Italian academic Alberto Grandi has done with a number of quite controversial statements about Italian classics. Just now that the Italian government has pushed their sacred cuisine forward as a candidate for the Unesco list.

Born in Italy, that much is true 
He really dared it. Alberto Grandi has stated that pasta alla carbonara is American. Now, the academic is certainly not stupid and I secretly already knew the theory about Americans and carbonara, as it has been established in books for some time. Food historian Luca Cesari wrote it in his A Brief History of Pasta, just a bit more subtly: that carbonara is an American dish that was born in Italy, although there is still something to say about that wording.

Guanciale in Carbonara 
In any case, more experts agree that the Italian chef Renato Gualandi first made the dish for American soldiers in ’44 in Riccione, and that the ingredients came from the Americans. This completely rejects the theory that the dish comes from coal miners around Rome (and is therefore Roman) and that guanciale is the only real bacon that belongs in carbonara.

Parmesan cheese in Wisconsin
According to Grandi, Parmesan cheese is about a thousand years old, but around the sixties, something changed in the production method. Before that, the cheese wheels were smaller and the cheese was softer and fattier. His explanation for why you only find the real Parmesan cheese in Wisconsin now is that Italian immigrants from the Po Valley around Parma moved to the US, where they continued cheese making. And while the recipe in Parma evolved over the years, the import Italians remained true to the original. My judgment? Mr. must be right, but every recipe evolves over time (which is usually positive) and letting the land of plastic cheeses take the credit breaks my heart for the little Italians.

Pizzeria already?
I'm not going to get burned here and will tell you the facts as Grandi presents them to the world: ‘Before World War II, you could only find pizza in a few southern towns, and the first restaurant that served only pizza opened in New York in 1911.’ Another quote: ‘For my father, pizza in 1970 was as exotic as sushi is for us now.’ So unromantic.

Panettone from the factory
Finally, one that I actually find fun. The current Christmas bread panettone is not a classic that has been made in Lombardy for centuries, but an industrial invention from the twenties. The original panettone was a thin, hard flatbread filled with a handful of raisins, was only eaten by the poor, and had nothing to do with Christmas. When the baker faced competition from the supermarket in the seventies, the craftsmen fought back with a homemade version of the factory products, and only then did the artisanal panettone as we know it now emerge.

Horse's head in your bed 
Yes, and anyone who makes such statements is not safe in their life. The discussion is heating up because Grandi recently spoke for the first time with foreign press for this article in The Financial Times, but has long been attracting the anger of his compatriots. In 2018, he was already attacked live on TV by a Roman presenter because of his statements about carbonara, and there are more furious food fanatics who have spoken out against him.

Grandi himself seems to care little. In his podcast, he jokes about not being able to go out without security, and he understands nothing of the commotion. ‘I do not doubt the quality of Italian food or products, I reconstruct the history of these dishes in a historically and philologically correct way,’ says Grandi in his defense.

Text: Italiamo.nl