Tag Archives: Italian culture

Italian food

Customs and Etiquette When Dining Out in Italy

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House Wine

In many Italian restaurants, you can get a low-cost house wine (usually one white and one red selection) in carafes of 1/4, 1/2, or a full litre. In some places this is a decent though not stellar local wine, in others it will be something completely unrelated to the area. Personally, I’d try something local, even if you have to buy a whole bottle – local wines are part of the authentic Italian food experience. And sometimes the house wine is very special indeed.

The house wine does not necessarily have a lower alcohol content than what you get in bottles; it has whatever alcohol content is normal for that type of wine.


Is a Pizza a Meal?

A normal Italian pizza is just right for one hungry person to eat – the size of a 12-14″ plate. True Italian pizza, at least in northern Italy, bears little relation to the huge thick globby thing they call pizza in the US and, for my money, the Italian version is a lot better. It’s a thin crust with a thin layer of tomato sauce and mozzarella (usually) plus whatever else you order on it – every pizzeria has a long list of options from the classic to the bizarre, but usually you can subtract ingredients just by asking. In the better pizzerie, pizza is cooked in a wood-fired oven. Don’t settle for anything less.

Italians don’t often drink beer with meals, except with pizza. Beer may be on tap or in bottles, and is served by volume (piccola, media, grande).

About Water

Aqua gassata (pronounced “gazata”) or frizzante (“fritz-antay”) has bubbles, naturale or non-gassata does not. While tap water is safe to drink all over Italy, Italians usually drink bottled water because they prefer the taste (not because the restaurants are looking for an excuse to make you pay more). You can insist on tap water, but be aware that in most parts of Italy it is very hard (lots of calcium), and you may not like the flavor. In some mountain locales where the local water is very good, they serve that in carafes for free. Anywhere else, it can be difficult to get tap water brought to your table, but, if you want to try, ask for acqua del rubinetto.

No, gassata is not the default choice, unless for some reason your waiter has preconceived notions about foreigners. The Italian population splits pretty evenly on the gas or no-gas preference, so why would any waiter assume otherwise?

Dining “al Fresco”

NB: To an Italian, al fresco is slang for being in jail!

Weather and facilities permitting, the waiter may ask if you prefer to sit indoors or outdoors. If you want to smoke with your meal, outdoors may be your only option nowadays. Prices should be the same for a sit-down meal no matter where you sit.

Sitting or Standing

At many/most bars you will be charged more if you occupy a table, even if you fetch your drinks/snacks from the bar yourself. Bars care about rapid turnover, so they charge you more for table service. It’s a conflict of interest between tourists wanting a place to sit down and rest their feet while enjoying the human scenery around them, and bars needing to make money from the space they’re sitting in. The more desirable the location (e.g., Saint Mark’s Square in Venice), the more ridiculous the price of a cup of coffee at a table. If you just want coffee, have it standing up at a little bar on a side street. If you want to rest your feet and enjoy the view, be prepared to pay for that.

Cover and Service Charges and Tipping

Most restaurants charge coperta (the term actually refers to the place setting), a minimal (1-3 euro) cover charge which includes the cost of bread, table settings, etc. Most do not charge for service, and Italians tip only minimally. Waiting tables is a trained and valued job in Italy, and waiters make decent salaries. Of course they do appreciate any tip that you leave but, unless you’re spending more than 50 euros a head on a meal, a tip of more than 5 euros is extravagant. I usually leave 1-2 euros plus whatever loose change I want to get rid of. (NB: In the US I tip very well – several of my friends worked their way through college on tips!)

Paying the Bill

Getting the bill in an Italian restaurant can actually be an ordeal. Unlike many American restaurants, Italian restaurants are usually in no hurry to get rid of you (and most Italians would react very badly to a restaurant trying to rush them out). I don’t know why, but it can take forever to get the bill. Maybe it’s because only the restaurant owner has access to the cash register, and he/she may be busy chatting with regular customers.

Note: Restaurant recommendations are here.

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Italian culture

Italian Freedom Fighters: Cultural Attitudes Towards the Law

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The debate about Italy’s new anti-smoking laws sputters on in some online forums. One chap had this to say on Zoomata:

“The reason Italians are upset is because we do not like to be told what to do. In fact, this law will be very difficult to enforce in the South, especially in the Naples area. Some have said that it will actually encourage people to smoke. To narrow minded Americans this may be difficult to understand. But, in Italy, Italians feel that they should have the freedom to decide. That is why many laws are so often disregarded in Italy. Italians are probably the world’s greatest free thinkers and lovers of freedom. Any law which forbids is viewed as an infrigment upon their rights.”

I managed to post a fairly polite reply, but this guy got my blood boiling. One of the traits I like least in Italian culture is this “every man for himself” attitude. An Italian’s loyalty is first to self, then to family, then to paese, and almost none to country. (NB: I’m not crazy about American-style “my country right or wrong” patriotism, either.)

In Italy, laws are often disregarded, not because they are felt to be wrong for the community, but because they are inconvenient for the individual: “Why should I obey the speed limit? I’m in a hurry.” This is a declaration, not of independence, but of sheer self-centeredness. Lowering and enforcement of speed limits have reduced overall highway fatalities in Italy, but every individual Italian asserts his right to drive as fast as he can get away with.

Probably for historical reasons, Italians have little sense of themselves as a unified country and culture, and almost no sense of shared “ownership” of a community and its resources. People deposit trash along country roads because it’s easier than going to the dump, never thinking that they are polluting the environment and ruining the beauty of the landscape. As long as it’s not their own front yard and they don’t have to look at it, they don’t care.

So some Italian smokers continue to assert their right to pollute my breathing space, and moan that the new law shows a worrying trend towards American-style attempts to tell everybody how to live. I agree that it’s possible to push any law too far, but, so far, these folks get no sympathy from me. When I used to whine about my troubles with smoke, I got no sympathy from most of them.

In any case, Italy’s anti-smoking law seems, to the surprise of many, to be sticking. Ross recently went to a disco, and told me that the smokers all had to go out on the terrace, even though it was a cold winter night. Unfortunately, there were so many of them that, when the disco got crowded and hot, stepping out for a breath of fresh air was counter-productive: she stepped out into clouds of smoke.

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Italian education

Sex Education in Italian Schools

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What with all the fuss in the US about sex education in schools, I was curious to know what, if anything, would be done about it in Italian schools. I got my answer recently, when Ross’ class [then age 15] had two 3-hour sessions at school. Parents were not notified before or after, and wouldn’t have known it was happening unless their kids told them. Ross told me quite a bit about it, though I’m not prepared to swear that she told me everything.

A representative of the local health agency (ASL) came with a young woman who was observing as part of her psychology studies. There was an icebreaker in which the kids (mostly jokingly) introduced each other, then an exercise in which they were told a story about a girl who needs to get across a river to see her boyfriend. The boatman says he’ll take her if she’ll have sex with him. She has no other way to reach her boyfriend, so she doesn’t know what to do. She goes to her mother, who says she doesn’t want to be involved.

The girl finally resolves to have sex with the boatman. When she reaches her boyfriend she tells him what happened, and he rejects her for having sex with someone else. The class was asked to determine who, in this improbable story, is “responsible.” (Whether they were meant to address “responsibility” in the sense of who was responsible for what happened, or in the sense of behaving responsibly, was not clear – perhaps deliberately.)

Ross told me that this degenerated into a vicious argument over abortion – “Who would be responsible if she got pregnant?”. Lecco is a very Catholic town, and the ASL lady told the class that, although abortion is legal, they would have trouble finding anyone in Lecco to perform one. I guess it’s good to be warned; fortunately, Milan is easily reached, should the need arise. More importantly, local health authorities are taking the correct steps to prevent the *need* for abortion: the kids were given detailed information on birth control and the use of condoms for disease prevention as well as birth control. They were also told that they can go to a youth clinic at their local ASL for more information, with or without their parents’ knowledge. The ASL lady said that they do try to involve parents in any big decisions (such as abortion), but that the kids have the right to keep their parents out of it if they prefer.

Interestingly, abstinence was never mentioned. I asked Ross why she thought the ASL lady didn’t discuss it as an option. “Oh, everyone would have jumped all over her.” It was clear that a number of the kids are already sexually active, and no judgment upon them was given or implied. Wow. Health care professionals who are allowed to approach teen sex realistically. What a concept.

I’m very relieved that the ASL takes these initiatives. As far as Ross and I can tell, I’m the only mother among her friends who talks to her kid about sex, and, from what Ross tells me, dangerous misinformation abounds among her Italian peers. If the parents aren’t talking to these kids, someone has to –the stakes these days are life and death. Ross’ friends know that I talk to her (I’m considered the coolest mom in Lecco for several reasons, including that), so I hope they’d feel comfortable talking to me if they needed to, but I’m glad someone more authoritative and knowledgeable is there for them – it diminishes my risk of being lynched by the good parents of Lecco!

^ Top: Sex education doesn’t stop at school. The public health poster shown above says “Defend yourself from AIDS, not from someone you like. Age does not save you from the risk of contagion.”

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Italian culture

Italy’s Smoking Wars

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On January 10th, a much-delayed law banning smoking in public places goes into effect in Italy. It requires public spaces (restaurants, clubs, discos, offices, bingo parlors…) to either wall off smokers in separate rooms, or to ensure adequate ventilation (a high volume of air exchange with a filtration system), or to forbid smoking altogether. Individuals caught breaking the ban would be fined, and restaurant etc. owners are expected to “play sheriff,” risking fines from 220 to 2200 euros if they do not.

The January 10th date already represents a compromise to allow owners to get through the holiday season (which ends with the Epiphany on January 6th), but many are gearing up to do battle against various aspects of the law, especially that requiring them to rat on their clients.

Some observers assume that this law, like so many others, will be routinely flouted in Italy. From what I’ve seen so far, I think that will depend on the attitude of individual owners. Those who are militant smokers themselves and/or cherish their smoking clientele will get away with as much as they can, while others, as I have observed before, have already banned smoking from their premises, and seem happy to have done so. They may already be discovering that, while they may lose a few clients among the fumatori accaniti (dedicated smokers), they make at least compensating gains among the non-smokers.

Smokers feel besieged the world over, as evidenced by the howls of outrage every time another country or city banishes them to the sidewalks. Having been a besieged non-smoker all my life, I feel no sympathy. For some of us - sinus and bronchitis sufferers like myself or, worse, asthmatics – any amount of smoke is a threat to health and even life. We have been effectively banned from many places and events by smoke. I greatly enjoyed an evening country dancing country-western with my DC roommate at a local club years ago, but had to leave because I was choking.

I likewise enjoyed the music and ambience at one of Milan’s jazz clubs, but have never returned since my first smoky night there years ago. Maybe now I can.

So, smokers, don’t begrudge us smoke-sufferers the opportunity to join in the fun. You always have the choice to step outside for a smoke; stepping outside to breathe isn’t much of an option for us.

Further discussion

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The “Real” Italy

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^ Of course, some people in Italy actually do sing opera for fun (and/or for a living).

To bring people to my site, I hang out in online forums about traveling and living in Italy, answering questions where I usefully can. It’s been an education for me as well, in American attitudes towards Italy.

One young woman bemoaned the fact that in her travels in Italy, and especially in Rome, she had not found the “real” Italy that she expected. Her vision of the real Italy apparently included (only) beautiful people beautifully dressed, spotless streets, and women who make pasta from scratch every day while singing along to Verdi and Puccini. She was sadly bewildered to find Rome full of immigrants (“Bulgarians and Chinamen,” as she phrased it), rude people, and young people kissing on park benches (she was of the opinion that this sort of behavior should be heavily fined – really, what planet was she from?).

Come to any country looking for a stereotype, and you’re bound to be disappointed, especially when your picture is based on the rose-colored memories of emigrant grandparents, or the more recent “live the good life in Italy” stereotype created by well-heeled foreigners who move to Tuscany, renovate a villa, and then write a book about it.

A recent post on Zoomata.com bewailed the removal of crucifixes from Italian classrooms (due to a court challenge by the Finnish mother of an Italian child); another on Fodors.com was upset over a bit of news reported in the US, that in Treviso a school’s nativity play was replaced with “Little Red Riding Hood.” Said the Fodor’s poster: “I love Italy. I thought I knew Italians, being American Italian myself.”

These two people, a Canadian and an American, both mourn Italy’s “becoming” secular rather than remaining Catholic. As second- or third-generation emigrants, they have skipped over several generations of Italian history, and apparently don’t realize that the separation of church and state in Italy was established in the Constitution (strongly modeled on the American one) in the early 1950s.

The Catholic Church still has influence in Italian life and politics, but that influence is waning (though not going down without a fight, I admit). The Church’s presence in daily life is nearly non-existent. Most Italians are still baptized etc. and would claim to be Catholic if you asked, but only about 10% (I’m guessing) are practicing Catholics.

There are still devout Catholics of course, but even they are puzzled by the attitudes of their non-practicing compatriots. One of my colleagues who is very active in his diocese told me: “These people show up wanting to marry in the church or baptize their kids. We’ve never seen them before and it means nothing to them, so we have to wonder why they bother.” If forced to think about it, these people might answer that it’s traditional, and/or that they want to please an older relative.

Italy still maintains many of the outward forms of Catholicism, but even those are being challenged, as in the above-mentioned cases of the classroom crucifixes and nativity play. Like most modern nations, Italy is wrestling with large-scale immigration and how to integrate new people, religions, and cultures into the existing culture and society. These are not easy issues, and the best answers differ even from community to community within a country. Some parts of Italy have found effective and interesting ways to bring their newly-multicultural communities together, others are still working on it. In most cases, the result will not look like the Italy that many Americans think they know.

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