Globalisation means that even Italians can buy American-style products in its supermarkets such as peanut butter (I’m a fan), tacos, Doritos, and Oreo cookies. However foreigners in Italy often complain that they have a hard time finding American, British and other non-native foods – particularly outside of big cities.

There may be a handful of villages where immigration to the UK occurred which new have bistros and bakeries serving British dishes and foods. But otherwise, non-Italian restaurants such as Mexican, Lebanese and Vietnamese are nowhere to be found in rural, less populated areas.

Milan is one thing but a tiny village in rural Basilicata is entirely different.

Foreigners come to Italy for the great food, but in the long run, particularly for foreign residents always eating the same indigenous cuisine, no matter how divine it is, it can sometimes get boring. Tastebuds get numb after just so many years of eating pizza, amatriciana pasta and lasagne or tortellini.

I never thought any foreigner could get bored of eating Italian cuisine, but I’ve met several people who have and complain about the non-variety of restaurants.

Outside big cities it is hard to find non-Italian food, especially American and Indian for instance. I know several Brits and Americans living in small rural villages in the south who have had enough of the zero availability of other cuisines and are fed up of always eating Italiano.

Ben and Anne Greene, a retired couple from Brighton, relocated to Calabria four years ago where they bought a rural house for less than €40,000 near the village of Cinquefrondi. Given the low prices and cost of living, for the first year they regularly went out for dinner.

“We’ve had more than our fair share of spaghetti with chili peppers and ‘nduja’ (spicy salami) sauce, let alone pizza and all sorts of short pasta”, Anne tells the The Local.

“We love Italian cuisine, and we never thought we would get bored of it, but lately we often really crave what we had back in the UK – that is a wide selection of foreign foods and cuisines.

“We miss having the freedom of opting for Mexican, Indonesian and Indian, around here you can’t even find a real Chinese restaurant unless you drive to the coast.”

In slightly bigger villages near Cinquefrondi there is sometimes a mixed offer of pizza and kebab in bars run by immigrants, but that’s about it, adds her husband.

In Sambuca di Sicilia, for instance, where the one-euro homes frenzy has lured many expats, alongside traditional taverns there’s just one pizzeria that also makes kebab-style food.

While in Mussomeli, another village in Sicily where cheap homes have attracted foreigners, a local restaurant has started to offer pizza and kebab, and also cheesecake. But that’s usually about as ‘varied’ as it gets in small-town Italy when it comes to food.

In rural Calabria however, one American couple recently opened an American restaurant to cater to local clientele and let them discover original American foods such as Cape Cod-style lobster rolls, onion rings and chicken wings.

Shannon Sciarretta and her partner Felipe da Silva launched ‘The Fig’ in the unknown village of Santa Domenica Talao.

Shannon has Italian origins and grew up eating Italian iconic dishes, but when she then spent her university years in Rome, she realised how very little availability there was of other cuisines, even in the Eternal City.

“It just struck me how there’s very little variety available in Italy when it comes to foreign foods or cuisines,” she says.

“So the idea of serving in Italy non-traditional stuff was always on my mind, and when we decided to move to Calabria, we thought it would be great to have locals taste our favourite American dishes because I think cuisine is a means of communication between different cultures”, says Shannon.

In fact, nearly all The Fig’s clientele is native, as villagers have been won over by its US-style cuisine.

I understand how foreigners can get bored eating always the same Italian food, but on the other hand, I am glad that Italy in its entirety is not yet such a globalized, cosmopolitan country where you can find Indonesian or Mexican food anywhere.

We like to stay attached to our local culinary traditions, which I hope will not die out easily.