DailyDirt: That's A Spicy Meatball, But It's Not Italian...?

Ramblings

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Sep 26th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

It can be difficult to nail down the definition of American food since immigrants from all over the world have settled in the US and created a distinctly different varieties of their traditional cuisines. If you didn't realize it, fortune cookies are not a Chinese dessert (Chinese-American, yes). So what other foods aren't as authentic as you might think? Here are just a couple other examples.

Spaghetti and meatballs sounds like a classic Italian dish for dinner, but it's actually not a common meal for people in Italy. Meatballs in Italy are generally smaller than their American counterparts and served separately from pasta. [url]
The names of pasta varieties can be confusing because there are so many kinds and they look vaguely similar to the casual observer. Thankfully, there's an infographic to help you figure out the difference between rotini and marziani. [url]
Italian restaurants in the US have created several dishes that are definitely not from Italy. One example is Lobster Fra Diavolo. Lobsters are not common in Italy, first of all. However, there could have been a similar dish with a different kind of crustacean. Maybe. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: cuisine, entree, food, infographic, italian, lobster, meatball, pasta, spaghetti

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

I guess wow fail, 26 Sep 2014 @ 6:06pm

Don't hit enter
Yup fail, I hit enter before I could enter my enlighting comment of I could really go for a pizza

Fail all around
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Fail more, 26 Sep 2014 @ 6:22pm
  
  Re: Don't hit enter
  So since I seem to be alone, anyone in downtown Toronto I recommend yummypizza, also on common meals in italy, my information comes from my mom in the mid sixties but she hitched through turkey (stupidly and almost fatally) and a bunch of the rest of post WWII eourpe, including Italy and there is not much meat in Italian meals and meat balls is not actually at all, the meat is usually separate dishes and there is not meat balls at all it's like Chinese food in north America, mostly made up..
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Whoever, 26 Sep 2014 @ 10:29pm
    
    Italian meals
    There is plenty of meat in Italian meals. It's just not served with the pasta. So, if you only have pasta dishes, you won't get much meat, but that's like complaining that if you only eat appetizers you don't get much meat.
    
    Milanese speciality is "Cotoletta alla milanese", which is big hunk of battered and fried veal and not much else.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 26 Sep 2014 @ 7:35pm

That Pasta Chart ...
... is just crying out for an Android app.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stefano, 26 Sep 2014 @ 11:15pm

and don't ask..
And, please, don't ask for 'Spaghetti Bolognese' in Bologna. They do not exist.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
nasch (profile), 29 Sep 2014 @ 4:52pm

If you didn't realize it, fortune cookies are not a Chinese dessert (Chinese-American, yes).

Actually they originated in Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_cookie

Lobsters are not common in Italy, first of all. However, there could have been a similar dish with a different kind of crustacean.

Prawns maybe?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Shah Inc (profile), 7 Nov 2019 @ 8:35am

Italian restaurants downtown orlando
Very informative post. Also Christinis Ristorante Italiano is a fine dining italian restaurant in Orlando Florida. It is located near International Drive, the Convention Center, Disney and Universal Studios on Restaurant Row. Here is the site https://www.christinis.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]