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LA BELLA VITA

La Bella Vita: The best Italian-language podcasts, and unexpected foods you’ll find in Italy

From Italian podcasts to surprising delicacies and our favourite overlooked travel destinations, new weekly newsletter La Bella Vita offers you an essential starting point for eating, talking, drinking and living like an Italian.

Published: 27 January 2023 15:41 CET
Updated: 28 January 2023 11:50 CET
La Bella Vita: The best Italian-language podcasts, and unexpected foods you'll find in Italy
Italy is famous for pizza and pasta but there's a lot else in store at traditional local restaurants or markets - and some of it may surprise you. (Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE / AFP)

La Bella Vita is our regular look at the real culture of Italy – from language to cuisine, manners to art. This new newsletter will be published weekly and you can receive it directly to your inbox, by going to newsletter preferences in ‘My Account’ or follow the instructions in the newsletter box below.

A cornerstone of Italian culture, the tabaccheria is used for much more than just buying cigarettes. In fact, these little shops are pretty central to everyday life and anyone who moves to or just spends time in Italy will need to become as familiar with them as they are with the local coffee bar.

From paying bills to purchasing bus tickets, here are just some of the services you should know about and a few tips for your first visit.

Why the tabaccheria is essential to life in Italy – even if you don’t smoke

For Italian language learners: listening to podcasts is a great way to immerse yourself in a new language. Luckily there’s a vast range of audio shows for people wanting to learn Italian, whether you’re studying at an advanced level or learning from scratch. Here we’ve selected a few of our favourites, plus readers’ suggestions:

Some of the best podcasts for learners of Italian

Italy is known worldwide for pizza and gelato, but Italian cuisine is incredibly diverse and visitors are often surprised by some of the local delicacies on offer. I know rustic Tuscan cuisine didn’t exactly match my expectations when I first arrived in Italy. I quickly learned to love it – but my mother-in-law’s homemade chocolate cake made with pig’s blood (sanguinaccio is a delicacy in Puglia…) was a step too far!

So, from fried brains and tripe to suggestive desserts that you definitely wouldn’t expect the local priest to approve of, here’s a look at some more of the traditional foods loved by Italians – but not always by foreigners.

From fried brains to ‘sexy’ cakes: The Italian foods you might not expect in Italy

Visitors can find more than they bargained for at a traditional Italian food market. (Photo by Andreas SOLARO / AFP)

As regular visitors know, there’s much more to Italy than just the glamour of Rome, Venice or Florence, but some destinations suffer – we think unfairly – from negative reputations. From Caserta to Reggio Calabria and beyond, here are some of the overlooked Italian towns that are home to incredible sights that everyone should see at least once.

Nine overlooked Italian towns you should visit

If you’re planning a visit to Italy (or to another part of Europe from Italy) this year but want to cut down your carbon footprint, train travel is a great option and there are more routes than ever connecting Italy’s major cities to other parts of the continent.

Here are some of the main direct international train services you can use for travel between Italy and other European countries this year.

The train routes connecting Italy to the rest of Europe in 2023

Remember if you’d like to have this weekly newsletter sent straight to your inbox you can sign up for it via Newsletter preferences in “My Account”.

Is there an aspect of the Italian way of life you’d like to see us write more about on The Local? Please email me at [email protected].

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OPINION

Doggy bags and sharing plates: Why Italy’s last food-related taboos are dying out

Italy is famous for its strong culinary traditions and unwritten rules around eating, but as Italians embrace doggy bags and informal dining, Silvia Marchetti argues that the last food-related taboos have been broken.

Published: 25 April 2024 09:40 CEST
Doggy bags and sharing plates: Why Italy's last food-related taboos are dying out

Italians are deadly serious when it comes to eating or, as they say, “mettere le gambe sotto il tavolo”, meaning ‘putting your feet under the table’.

Three meals per day remain sacrosanct at home, but at restaurants the eating etiquette is changing, particularly in big cities where globalisation has an effect.

I recently discovered, much to my surprise, that Italians are embracing doggy bags. When I was a kid, many many years ago, to us Italians it always seemed like something only foreigners could do, especially Americans.

We would never have asked a waiter to give us a paper bag to bring away the food for the next day, it just would never have popped up in our minds: you eat what you are served and if you no longer wanted what you’d paid for, well too bad, you’ll leave it on the plate. It would’ve been embarrassing to walk away with a doggy bag.

So I was shocked when recently at a restaurant in Rome I saw Italians taking away bags of leftover lunch food, including cold pizza slices and meatballs. It almost knocked me off my chair.

READ ALSO: Are doggy bags still taboo in Italy’s restaurants?

When the waitress came to our table to bring the cheque, and saw that we hadn’t finished our fried  fish and spaghetti alle vongole, she asked if we wanted a doggy bag. My jaw dropped. It was a first for me.

Yet what really shocked me was that the restaurant was not in the city centre, but in the countryside where traditions tend to survive, or at the very least, take longer to die.

It struck me how it’s no longer foreigners asking for doggy bags, but even Italians have overcome the stigma of this former faux pas.

The sad truth is that it’s not just because of globalisation and the economic crisis following the pandemic. There’s been a fall in the cultural level of many Italians, so asking for a doggy bag is also a way to avoid having to cook for the evening or for the day after, rather than to save money.

Sadly, this trend is not an exception, nor a one-off, and in Italy it’s not driven by concerns over food waste (we’re really not that ‘green’) or the cost of living.

Italian restaurants are simply becoming more generically European and international, adapting to global habits and the requests of foreign clientele.

In Rome’s touristy spots, restaurants showcase photos of dishes outside the restaurant to lure customers, or display real plates of gluey carbonara. This is something I had never seen in my childhood.

I have noticed that other restaurant eating taboos and etiquette rules have fallen away, too.

A few (well-off) friends of mine bring their own bottles of wine along when they eat out so that they don’t have to pay for these at the restaurant. I find this very inappropriate, but it usually happens when the restaurant owner and customers are friends or know each other.

READ ALSO: Want to eat well in Italy? Here’s why you should ditch the cities

Trends in restaurant etiquette are changing. There are eateries that serve pizza at lunch, which used to be something you could only order for dinner unless you’re in Naples.

The standard three courses which we normally have are also being messed up: appetisers, first, second and side dishes are eaten in a disorderly way – something which would make my granny turn in her grave.

I have seen Italian families first order a T-bone steak and then pasta or a slice of pizza, while many couples share plates. The man orders one type of spaghetti dish, the woman orders another kind of spaghetti and half-way through the meal they switch dishes. This was something very unusual in the past. Before in restaurant there were boundaries in eating habits and in the eating culture, which are now blurring.

My parents taught me it is rude to poke your fork into someone else’s plate to curl up some spaghetti for yourself. My dad always looked sideways at anyone who did that: not only is it extremely improper, he thinks, but it is also very unhygienic.

There are no more rules left in Italian restaurants nowadays, and all taboos have been broken.

To adapt to foreign clients many restaurants tend to stay open the whole day, especially in very touristy areas, and the untouchable hours of lunch and dinner now overlap. Some taverns even serve breakfast.

READ ALSO: Why do Italians get so angry if you mess with classic recipes?

In the north, I’ve noticed that bread and extra-virgin olive oil are often missing from the table and you have to ask for them, which is something very atypical of Italian standards.

To find the traditional Italian eating code in restaurants where there are rules that will never die, one must go deep into unknown spots, and travel to remote villages no one has ever heard of. It’s always harder to find such authentic, untouched places.

I really hate to say this, but wherever there is mass tourism local traditions tend to die, particularly food-related ones.

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