The Americans who move to Italy almost all arrive thrilled about the healthcare. They have read that Italy has an excellent public health system, that care costs a fraction of what it does at home, that the financial terror of American medicine simply does not exist here, and all of that is true. What they …
An American walks into an Italian bar on a blazing July afternoon, the kind of day when the air shimmers over the cobblestones, and orders an iced coffee. The barista’s response is a small hesitation, a flicker of something between confusion and pity, and then the American gets something, because Italian baristas are gracious, but …
In Sicily, caponata is the dish that proves vegetables can be as complex and satisfying as anything with meat in it. It is a sweet and sour eggplant relish, served at room temperature, that balances the richness of fried eggplant against the tang of vinegar and the sweetness of sugar, with capers and olives and …
The Americans who research an Italian retirement almost all start in the same handful of places. Rome, Florence, Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast, the names that everyone knows and that every other retiree is also considering. And almost all of them eventually discover the same problem, that the famous places are expensive, crowded, and increasingly hostile …
So here is the awkward thing I keep running into. A cardiologist in Phoenix tells a patient to avoid bread, to avoid wine, to never nap, to eat chicken breasts every day, and to treat olive oil like a condiment you whisper about. Then you spend a month in Valencia and watch retirees walk to …
If your carbonara involves cream, garlic, peas, or a jar, you did not make carbonara. You made pasta with regrets. Here’s the Roman version that tastes like silk and takes less time than your dishwasher cycle. Carbonara is one of those dishes Americans think they “upgraded” by making it richer. Romans hear that and blink …
There is a moment in a lot of Italian restaurants when the waiter’s face does something small and polite when a tourist orders. It is not contempt. It is the particular patience of someone watching a person pair a sauce with a shape that no Italian would ever put together, the culinary equivalent of wearing …
Slide into a crowded trattoria in the Spanish Quarter, order spaghetti alle vongole, and raise your knife. The room tenses. The waiter tilts his head. You’ve just tripped a local wire. In Naples, the way you handle long pasta is a language, and cutting it says you don’t speak it. The city is generous with …
And what it reveals about modesty, masculinity, and why comfort in Europe still shocks American culture It’s not their chest. It’s not their back. And it’s not what you’re thinking. The body part Italian men expose comfortably, unapologetically, and in full view is the upper thigh. Often well above the mid-thigh. Sometimes near the hip. …
The first time an American uses an Italian bathroom, something usually stops them. There is a second porcelain fixture next to the toilet, low and unfamiliar, and they have no idea what it does. By the end of a long stay in Italy, many of them have quietly become converts, and the bathroom they go …
Open the cupboard of a typical American kitchen and somewhere near the stove sits a can of cooking spray, the aerosol that hisses a thin film of oil onto a pan with a press of the nozzle. Open an Italian kitchen cupboard and you will not find it. In its place is a bottle of …
The Italian rule that milk does not belong with a meal is one of the most consistently held food beliefs in Italian culture, and it is one of the most consistently misunderstood by Americans. The belief is not a quirk. It is not a superstition. It is not something Italians say to confuse tourists. It …