Daily Dose of English 128
(American) Italian Food
Daily Dose of English 128
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about American Italian food. which is actually a bit of an interesting cuisine, especially in the U.S., because kind of when the U.S. started or when it was really growing, there was a lot of Italian immigration. And so there's a humongous population of people in the U.S. with very sort of traditional Italian roots. And that then eventually morphed and changed to become something that's totally different in at least the cuisine and the language and all these different things. you can actually see a lot of the sort of Italian-American style life, I guess, in something like The Godfather. Not every family is like a mob family, but like the food they eat and some of the ways they talk is very similar. It feels quite real to regular Italian-Americans, except for the fact that they're also a mob family. But I think you know what I mean, where it's similar, but it's not the same thing at all. But something that is very influential on the US is Italian food. And so especially in New England, so like New York and Pennsylvania, parts of the country up there, there's a lot of Italian food. But then in the rest of the US, it's a very common thing to make at home. Italian food is certainly a a staple of the American kitchen, I guess to say. And a way that you can definitely see this is very obvious is by looking in a grocery store because there are tons and tons of tomato options. There's canned tomatoes, fresh tomatoes of all different shapes and sizes and amounts. There's so many different ways to buy tomatoes because They are a very fundamental piece of American cuisine, despite not necessarily being, or I don't think they're from the US. Where are tomatoes from? Tomato plant origin. Let's see. Tomato, they are, oh wait, no, they are from South America, Mexico, Central America. But they were brought over long ago, and they were made in like, we mostly think of them in the ways that Europeans, Italians sort of see them as like a staple, a base. But that's interesting, I didn't know that they were, I guess I didn't know that. But they don't feel as fundamental to, I guess that's not true. Mexican food uses lots of tomatoes. There's like a base or something like that, but also like chilies, whatever, I'm getting off topic. The point is that there's a lot of tomatoes and we use them in sort of the more Italian style. especially for things like pastas. Pastas are very common in the US. A lot of food has pasta. You might have heard of chicken noodle soup, which has noodles, which are pasta. Spaghetti and meatballs is super duper common. There is a lot of, ragu for example, there's just a lot of pasta that we eat. And it is in ways that are similar to Italian stuff, although kind of breaking the mold a bit. I also quickly wanna mention a, there's tons of good YouTube channels for food, but there's a specific one that I like when I think of Italian-American food for sure, is called Sip and Feast, which the host has a great sort of Northeastern accent, and it feels very homey, I guess, the kind of food that he makes. And so if you want some good recipes, I definitely recommend that channel. as sort of American-Italian food and recipes and stuff. So yes, getting into the actual food, there's things like spaghetti and meatballs are super common, pizza as well, baked ziti is also super duper common, lasagna, fettuccine alfredo, all of these are very typical dishes that you can find in lots of different restaurants. But I think one of the things that makes Italian food really interesting in the US is that it's seen as both something pretty quick and cheap and low quality. Not necessarily low quality, but like looks don't matter. It's more about the flavor and the amount. But then also Italian food can be super fancy and expensive and amazingly delicious and complicated. And so I find that kind of interesting. My first job was in a pizza parlor, which in a way is an Italian restaurant because we serve stuff that we would expect to see in an Italian restaurant. So for pizzas, for sure, but then a bunch of salads, Caesar salad, which is also Mexican, Caesar salad, Greek salad, garden salad, then there's tons of pasta dishes that we would do and pretty much everything has that I would say almost tinge of Italian-ness to it. Although I highly expect that any Italian person coming to eat there would be like, what the fuck is this? This isn't food. I mean, it was actually pretty good. It was not like the best food ever, but like me and my family ate there fairly occasionally because I had a 30% discount and it was fine. It was pretty good. There was wine and it was not bad. Definitely not, super high-quality five-star restaurant but good. There's also some pretty big famous brands that do essentially Italian food so for example the Old Spaghetti Factory is all Italian-esque food and it is also pretty good. It's not terrible, it's not great but it's pretty good and it definitely is like has those roots as well, tons of pasta, tons of baked dishes, vegetables, Italian dressing, bolognese sauce, marinara sauce, all these different sauces and things that feel to us Italian. Same with sort of garlic bread, that sort of thing, calzones, also feels to us how we think of it as Italian. Also one of my favorite desserts, I think is Italian, which is a tiramisu. Tiramisu is fantastic. And actually the best tiramisu that I've ever had is the one that I make. I make a really good tiramisu, very, very yummy. And my dad usually requests it for, I don't know, his birthday or for Christmas or whatever, because it's also his favorite. And I think it's very common here. And I'm actually reading, I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for Italian American cuisine, is that tiramisu is very popular in American diners as well. And I've definitely seen that, where you can find it pretty easily. in diners. Another thing that is a lot more common on the east coast, so in like Boston or New York, are cannolis, which are also really good and that's a sort of a fried shell. It's like a bit of a cylinder with a sweet ricotta filling on the inside. Ricotta is a type of cheese. and it's sweetened and there's usually some stuff on top and a good cannoli is so good, oh my god. Bad cannolis are easy to find, they're not very good, but good cannolis are freaking amazing. They're so good. What else? I don't really know what else I have to say about Italian food. Oh, the high-end restaurants, high-end Italian restaurants are very popular as well, usually for very fancy wine and good Sometimes they often offer pizza, but it's not the most popular thing. They serve things like fancy pastas and all sorts of different dishes that are probably more traditional. Risotto is also definitely a big thing in the more fancier restaurants. And a good, like a nice Italian restaurant that isn't too expensive is really, really good. In New York specifically, again, sort of in that part of the country, there's a lot more of them and you can find them. I remember going to one that had all you can eat pasta, which is all freshly handmade. So they would make pasta and they would make like a plate of it. Okay, I'm not explaining this well. Every day they would have, I think four different pastas that they would do with different sauces, different shapes or whatever. And essentially all day they would have people making more of it and making a big pan of it. And then they would, once it's done, they would walk around the restaurant and just serve it to you on your plate. until it's gone and so you this means that everybody ends up getting really good fresh uh pasta as much as they want of various different types i don't know if it was three or four different types but it was really really good and i only got to go once because i don't live in new york anymore but i didn't figure what it's even called But that sort of thing is definitely a very different experience than like the typical New York side of the street pizza parlor or whatever that's technically called Italian food. But yeah. So anyways, to wrap things up, Italian food in the U.S. is a very unique thing since it's been here for so long. It's kind of gained its own identity, very different than what you might think of as in actual Italy. And I find that pretty interesting. But it's also very good, and I'm not gonna complain about eating Italian food, because I like it. Even the cheaper stuff, the more expensive stuff, the homemade stuff, whatever it is, very good. I hope someday to go to Italy and just eat a bunch of food. I just want to. But anyways, that's all the time that I have for today. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Ben's Language Lab. I hope that you enjoyed. And let me know down in the comments, is Italian food popular in your country? I'm curious to know. See you again. Bye.
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