Yum-Yum Land

One of the most popular channels in America is the Food Channel, which is entirely dedicated to, well, food.  Every thirty minutes another of its chefs rolls out another complicated and at times unrealistic meal, or reality shows judge the best chef to cook with surprise ingredients like root-beer jelly beans, or interior decorators are given 48 hours and a shoe-string budget to modernize dirty, greasy dives.

Becoming one of the celebrity chefs with your own show on the Food Channel means more than just being able to provide for yourself and your family … it means writing cookbooks, becoming head of a merchandizing empire, and becoming an American pop culinary icon.  And these icons have nothing to do with the slightly snobby image maintained by our celebrity chefs in Italy.  You might run into Paula Deen, a seventy-year-old lady with her down-home cooking and down-South accent always ready to stick a finger in some sauce and lick it off enthusiastically.  Or Rachel Ray, who chops and stirs in a state of perennial euphoria, selling her philosophy of three easy meals in thirty minutes.  Or Giada, who prepares Italian food while seductively murmuring “Mmmmmmmm” or “Ahhhhhhhh.” In fact this use of onomatopoeic sounds is everywhere on these types of shows, though I myself am not much of a fan …

For an XXL nation, this constant exposure to food, whatever its claims to being healthy, seems paradoxical.  The culture of eating well is still inaccessible to the majority of the population, who have less and less time and money to eat healthily, and who therefore resort to grabbing a quick meal out, frequently at a fast food joint.

Simplicity is never on the menu when you prepare dinner in America.  Recipes are significantly less simple than those in the Mediterranean diet and flavors are piled one on top of another in ever more caloric combinations.  Hot or spicy foods are particularly popular, and even a green salad gets covered in heavy sauces.  Dipping is everywhere, and the Rolls-Royce of this practice is certainly the Seven-Layer Dip, composed of  seven layers of creamy stuff to be scooped out by gigantic dip-sized chips.

A meal out in a restaurant never lasts more than an hour, and often less than that, and for an Italian it can be rather stressful.  As soon as you sit down, your waitress shows up and introduces herself in a loud voice, pouring huge glasses of ice water and leaving you the menu.  No more than five minutes later she reappears to take your order.  In Italy after five minutes people still haven’t figured out who is sitting where around the table.  After ten minutes, fifteen max, a steaming hot plate is dumped in front of you and then at intervals of every three minutes after that your waitress pops up to ask you if everything is fine and your hamburger cooked right.  The moment the first person around the table puts down his fork, the perky waitress (who needs to act this way since almost her entire salary depends upon tips from customers) shows up again to whisk away the plate.  When everyone has finished, the check is there waiting for you and before you know it the table is cleared and someone else is edging into your seats.  Sitting around chatting after the meal is impossible, since the restaurant counts on getting as much turnover as possible, whereas in Italy the maximum number of seatings for a night is two, and more frequently just one.

Food in America is experienced in two ways: intellectually by the wealthier class, who enjoys comparing Tuscan oils and French cheeses, or as a mere physical need that must be fulfilled.  In Italy, food is a social event, hours and hours at the table talking and sharing thoughts, drinking wine enjoying the dolce far niente in the presence of friends and excellent, simple dishes.

I remember the shocked faces of my American family when they first sat down for these long affairs.  I think that at first it was very strange for them to spend three hours in a restaurant without a waiter breathing down their necks.  On the contrary, he would often sit down with us to chat and to offer us a limoncino on the house.

They say that a nation’s culture can be measured by its television shows.  People’s relationship with food and their obsession with sports as certainly a good measure of American society.

But if that’s the case, what then would they say about us Italians?

… We haven’t turned into a nation of dirty old men and cheap sluts, have we?