Something is happening to traditional Italian food, and it breaks my heart to admit it. The soulful, simple dishes that once defined Italy’s kitchens are quietly disappearing.
The food of our Nonna, made with homegrown tomatoes, garden herbs, and simple ingredients, is being replaced by something shinier, faster, and more marketable. Italian cuisine is still famous and widely celebrated, but its spirit seems to be fading.
So what happened, and who is keeping Italian tradition alive while the world moves on? Before moving forward, I will say, this is a generalization and that not every restaurant has lost its way. Many are supporting tradition and even introducing people to more unknown regional dishes over the classics.
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⏱️⏱️TIMECODES⏱️⏱️
0:00 Introduction to to Traditional Italian Food
0:46 The Unsung Heroes in Italian Kitchens
2:22 Why Young Italian Chefs Are Losing Their Way
4:30: Marketing: The True Killer of Traditional Italian Food
7:44 Why are We Losing Traditions
9:37 Cooking Is Legacy
9:55 Final Thoughts
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🎬 #VincenzosPlate is a YouTube channel with a focus on cooking, determined to teach the world, one video recipe at a time that you don’t need to be a professional chef to impress friends, family and yourself with mouth-watering #ItalianFoodRecipes right out of your very own kitchen whilst having a laugh (and a glass of vino!).
37 Comments
I am reading all your comments with passion and I am happy to read your personal experiences, you point of views and your opinions. Thank you for your support and authenticity. When you find a great small restaurant managed by a family it deserves your frequent support otherwise I say make it yourself and have fun keeping traditions alive in your kitchen.
Many of you dont know this but I have a website where you can find all the written Italian Recipes http://www.vincenzosplate.com
Evolution is important, as you say. But if that evolution happens too fast, it risks becoming something completely different instead.
It's like with a broom. First the bristles become weak and worn, so you change them for new ones.
Then the shaft becomes old and maybe starts to give you splinters, so you exchange it for a new shaft.
And then the part that holds the bristles breaks, and you have to change that.
When it all is said and done, you'll still have a broom. But…. is it still the same broom?
I feel a lot of the same things you do Vincenzo. The world is changing rapidly and it's leaving a lot of important things behind.
Things like love and compassion, common sense and loyalty to family. It's as if it all is going down the drain.
Time is a wind with teeth, my friend. As it passes by, it takes and breaks. It wears and tears.
A wind that never slows! A wind that always blows! It does not fill your sails, but turns your entire ship to dust.
And yet…
Time grows trees. Time heals and it renews. It unlocks doors and crumbles walls. It raises empires and then watches as they fall.
Time is relentless but patient. It does not haste, but never waits. Remember this as time comes your way!
Treasure each, and every day!
Thank you for your wonderful and educational videos! They have inspired me not only to embrace Italian cuisine, but also
to preserve the traditional cuisine of my own culture. You've taught me some very important lessons.
And it's not about clinging to the past, but to never forget how we got to where we are.
The people who came before us and worked the soils, so that food could grow. Ancestors who gave us the knowledge
about what we can eat and how to make it not only nutritious but also delicious.
I will remain a loyal subscriber of yours, until the very end. That's a promise.
Great video. The one thing I don't agree with is about mixing certain pastas with certain sauces such as spaghetti bolognese. My parents were born and raised in Sicily and migrated to the US in the 60s. I grew up here and my Mom makes great food! So good that once the kids were raised she opened a catering business because people loved her fresh, simple Italian food. I think you are being too strict. As long the ingredients are fresh and simple that you can combine things like spaghetti with larger meatballs or bolognese. I do agree with your takes on the chain restaurants, pre-made food and way too fancy ingredients being added to traditional recipes though. I think that is too much. But let's not be so rigid and strict that we turn more people towards those chain restaurants and other non-traditional pathways.
Bravo, Vincenzo . Among the reasons why traditionally the Italian food in New York was great: 1. access to the best ingredients at the port, fresh meat, imported cheese from Italia 2. The food was made by immigrants, who cooked it in the traditional style, for their palate. As the immigrants became gentrified, most of the food is not made by Italians anymore, and you are right these chain restaurants have mass produced garbage food mixed in a factory someplace.
To be fair… what's called "traditional Italian food" in the vast majority of cases is less than a century old, as with very every single "cuisine" in the world. If you stretch it, you can find a dish or two that has stood the test of time without being massively changed for 200 years, but anything beyond that, forget it.
The sad thing is it isn’t just Italian food, it’s all food. My home city of Chicago has an incredible food culture with each neighborhood having different takes on our famous street foods like hot dogs and Italian beef. But in the last ten or fifteen years, those have slowly been drowned out by an increasing number of trendy restaurants that all serve technically good and delicious but ultimately soulless hipster food. The kind of thing that is packed with creativity but entirely lacking in substance, and you can tell that these aren’t dishes that emerged organically. Italian beef was developed by Italian immigrants doing what they could with the cheap cuts of meat they could afford, a chorizo lobster Benedict is the result of a chef trying to prove to us that he’s good at what he does
Vincenzo, can you keep the recipe for Pollo alla Diavola alive?
You must preserve traditions, all of Europe! And Immigrants will destroy everything
I agree with you Vincenzo. My ex husband is italian and I learned soooo much from his aunt who cooked traditional italian foods. She was a gem of the whole family because no one else cooked like her!! I learned as much as i could from her, and i use her craft in a lot of dishes i make. They are so much better, especially when you make FRESH sauce and FRESH pasta. I will take a home cooked meal over a viral trend any day… Some things get over looked so easily.
I mean, Vincenzo, no offense but isn't it because so many Italians like yourself have emigrated from the country instead of trying hard to make it become a better place? I know a lot of Italians, my partner is Italian as well. And it seems to be an Italian tradition to give up on their own country and move somewhere else.
Your channel has made sure that Italian food will never die. Sure, it might be hard to come by in restaurants but the art itself hasn't been lost. You are keeping it alive.
Traditional cuisines in countries around the world are dying out because of the fact that the traditions of homestyle, "nonna" cooking were passed down through generations of women who had pride in being home makers and saw cooking for their families as an ultimate expression of love and a valid intellectual pursuit or vocation. Your nonna knew from a young age that she was to play a important role and was inspired and supported by the older women in her life to spend the thousands of hours necessary in the kitchen to become a proficient cook of traditional foods. When your nonna was young, it wasn't "nonna's cooking", it was just cooking, and it was a valuable vocation for women of all ages to pursue, not something exclusive to a tiny minority of men looking to become famous chefs. Today young women are raised to believe that that this precious and irreplaceable role of home maker and keeper of traditional wisdom is lesser, or even constitutes oppression, and that it is beneath them and that only careers and degrees bring value. And so our nonnas (or babushkas, or grandmas) are the last generation of women to inherit these ancient traditions. The immigrants, as you said, are trained to make certain meals for tourists but the tradition, skill, and wisdom of thousands of generations of women will soon become extinguished under the false banner of "progress" and "women's rights".
I dunno man. I live in NYC, both a food and immigrant city. From what I see, for every Michelin chasing fusion restaurant that opens in Manhattan, there are 10 restaurants opened in the outer borroughs by new immigrants doing it the way their grandma did it.
Also, Italian American is it's own culture. It's not "wrong", it's just a different thing.
open borders kills every country that allowed it. we must reinforce our own culture and promote our OWN families to have more kids to pass our traditions and culture down to them. This is not anti-immigrant this is pro our western culture. Has nothing to do with chasing Michelin stars
What has been largely lost when it comes to authentic Italian cuisine is that at its foundation, it was always about stretching the Lira. Simple, inventive and extracting the most from the freshest ingredients in the particular season. There is no other place on this earth that is as blessed with both the bounty and the heritage that has created what we know as Italian cuisine.
Thank you. This has already happened to Chinese food, as well. I met my wife when she was a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. After we married, she made things that she learned to make in Guangzhou as a child. She had cooked for her family since she was 9 years old, because her parents had to work. She said the stuff they served in the Chinese restaurant was mostly not made the way it was made in China. I started watching Yan Can Cook and she was dismissive of that. "You watch too much Yan Can Cook." Of course I also introduced her to some American food like pancakes. Perhaps the pancake was invented in China, but we make them much differently in the USA. She told me that butter was just "fet" (fat), and I agreed. Yes, it's good fat, too. We had a garden and one year we had lots of sweet yellow peppers. I said let's do something with these peppers and together we made some wonderful pepper boats with dried shrimp. I also showed her how to roast acorn squash, which is unknown in China, it seems, and make an apple pie. (Then she used the oven to heat the house and destroyed the thermostat, and there was no more oven. Oh well.) She was in touch with the local Chinese community and we went to some more authentic places that served delicacies like chicken feet. They would then go out of business for lack of American customers. It's all about marketing, and the big places lie about what is authentic.
Traditional recipes need to be passed on. They have lasted for a reason. Dont let Italy go the way of the UK. We had many great dishes that have practically vanished from restaurants only to be replaced by poor imitations and junk food. Chefs can experiment the problem is when its passed off as traditional. As for michelin stars Marco Pierre White gave back his stars as he tought they had become meanigless. He did a show ' Marcos Great British Feast' showcasing simpler, traditional dishes which is worth checking out.
Went to Milan this summer and stayed in a touristy area in a nice boutique hotel. I wandered around, looking for the old school, Mom and Pop, restaurant, thinking it would be down the side streets off the busy area. Never found one. So I asked a women I met from Milan who spoke English and asked if there were any restaurants like that, especially NON tourist restaurants. She said "no, not within walking distance". So sad. I wasn't about to drive a car in Milan, or really anywhere in Italy. So I made do with the tourist or expensive places.
Italian food is a scam! Most traditional foods barely existed in the 1950ies! There were no Pizzerias and Ciabatta exists since 1990! Italians make a big story, but it‘s a scam!
This is clickbait – a headline that is not supported by the feature itself.
I don't believe it!
The best restaurants today offer pizza, pasta, Mexican, Pakistani, Indian, and Chinese food, schnitzel, and of course sushi. The owner is named Raschid.
Just kidding. I could puke at what's happening right now.
I'm gonna unsubscribe to your channel if you continue this promotion of multiculturalism. It's not good. This is what really kills tradition and identity. Nationalism and feeling pride of your own countries traditional food is essential. Fight for Italians Vincenzo 👊 🇮🇹
I live in Glasgow and there are so many pizza places, lots are good but the very best place is still the one that is the closest to the traditional Neapolitan way of making Pizza 🤤
I think the thing that’s killing traditional Italian cooking is the fact that everyone wants convenience. Putting cream where it doesn’t belong, using the wrong cheese, putting a fried egg on top of the pasta instead of incorporating it into the sauce, people unfortunately don’t want to take the time to do it right and take these shortcuts because they want the food quick. Good food takes time. End of story.
I’m no chef, but I’m glad I’ve watched your videos. You’ve taught me things that make my home cooking better, plus you helped me figure out which ingredients available in my area are the best to use. It’s chefs like you that make sure these secrets won’t fade away. Thank you for everything you do!!
Personally I feel like these traditional places are still decently common outside of the very touristic areas in Italy, no? At least that's my experience as a Swiss person who mostly sees Northern Italy (perhaps it's different further South). Recently I had food in a restaurant in some random small village right behind the border and the place was led by a pretty young crew and they were serving authentic local dishes from Valtellina. They also tried to appear modern in terms of the design of the menu as well as the inside of the restaurant (it was an old basement/cellar with walls made of rock but with modern furniture and lighting) but prices were very reasonable, everything handmade and it tasted great.
This is just one example, I think in the long run, authentic Italian cuisine will be fine, there's young people who care about it now already and fine dining is very high pressure and doesn't have infinite growth potential either. Rich people can only eat so much. All of this is just anecdotal though obviously, perhaps I'm drastically underestimating the dire situation that traditional Italian cuisine finds itself in.
today, Michelin is in the mind of schools and chefs. Schools teach all the techniques, french cuts and sauces, the fancy techniques and they kill themselves for michelin stars, then wanna follow trends instead of just following their roots, respect their soul…. just like with Portugal with so many receipts being changed too much for the tourist queues….
"Simplicity is always the best". Yes. If done right. I had simple dishes with very few ingridients, but the mouthfeel, texture, and taste was excpetional.
"I want local food" — YES. Exactly. I don't need all those international restaurants, I want to taste the food of the region.
Most people find authentic Italian food delicious but cannot adapt to the Italian way of eating. I have a wonderful Italian restaurant near me but it's the kind of place you go to once or twice a year for a special occasion. You start out with bread and olives and salumi and cheeses, and you have wine, and several courses, and linger at the table for two hours. That's fantastic but people mostly don't have the time, except on those special occasions. People love pasta but they want to have a meal in one sitting. That's why pasta is often paired with a protein like sausage, or meatballs, or fried cutlets of chicken or veal to make a complete meal on one plate. I know this is not the Italian way but it fits with today's fast pace of life. True Italian style must not make sense economically for restaurants either. They don't want customers taking up a table for two hours, or their waitstaff making 7 or 8 trips to every table.
"The Nonnas are dying"? Dramatic, lol. While older people do, in fact, die, I assure you that there will be a new generation of old people to take their place (us). There will always be Nonnas. I learned to cook from my grandmother, I assume she learned to cook from hers. You ended the video with a question — What to do about the future. It's simple. Teach your kids to cook. It's not optional. And not just to safeguard old recipes and traditions. It's also important for the child. Most of your palate is defined in early childhood. Your kids will be picky eaters or adventurous eaters based on what they're eating in those early years. The best way to ensure they're being exposed to a varied array of flavors and textures is to get them in the kitchen, involve them in adult food culture FROM THE BEGINNING.
Oh no, you used the wrong Italian pasta with this Italian sauce. THATS NOT ITALIAN! Oh no you made this Italian meat to big. THATS NOT ITALIAN! 😂😂😂
My family doesn't have 20 people and my kitchen can barely fit me inside, I can't cook like they used to.
It's exactly the same in Greece. I try to keep the tradition at home, but outside, things are falling apart.
I understand the argument but what is considered traditional? Marco Polo brought noodles from China. So are pasta non traditional Italian Chinese fusion? Then what is the traditional Italian food? Also fancy food served to mobility always created fufu dishes. This is nothing new.
People tend to view the recipes from their era to be "traditional". Everything new is considered a worrying situation while we have already forgotten the cooking of the past generations. Not all change is good in any generation but not all change is bad either. As a fellow senior citizen, it is always good to reflect on all aspects and sometimes dwelling on tradition may mean a changing of era. If the food is good, even if it is not traditional may be ok.
I just had dinner at a supposedly fancy Italian restaurant here in Stockholm about a week ago, and I must say that the recipes I've gotten from you, Gennaro and others and made at home were better
What's all this nonsense about "tradition" ? Beethoven made his own tradition, but that doesn't mean that any composer coming after him wrote rubbish music, – just different. Nowadays we have access to many more and different ingredients than the "traditionalists" had, plus we have better equipment, more science applied and, yes, people have to eat, so you might as well enjoy the experience. I agree that food for fashion's sake is absurd, but then that's me. Eat bloody flowers if you want to !