|
| |
|
|
Mamma
Mia, It's Certified Italian
by Mad Dog
|
The Italian
government is taking on something which has been troubling people for
years--being able to find an Officially Certified Italian Restaurant. |
|
Decisions are strange
things. One minute you can decide to quit your job, sell everything you
own, and move to a small town in Iowa you selected by throwing the cat
at a spinning globe and seeing where the claw marks ended up, all on a
whim. The next minute you’re wracking your brain trying to decide
between the light blue shirt and the barely-perceptibly-lighter blue
shirt. The big decisions are usually the easier ones, it’s the small
ones that create the problem. I’m sure if we’d been flies on the
White House wall in 1945 we would have heard Harry Truman say, “Sure,
drop the bomb on Hiroshima. Hmmm….I really don’t know if I’m more
in the mood for mashed or baked potatoes tonight.” Then, of course,
we’d have been smooshed against the wall by a sledge hammer because
subtlety wasn’t the order of that day.
Which restaurant to dine at can be
one of those difficult little decisions. While sometimes you’re very
much in the mood for a certain type of food, or a particular restaurant,
more often than not the dynamic of the decision-making comes down to,
“I don’t know, where do you want to go?” We weigh factors
including ethnicity, reputation, reviews, recommendations, price, and
what kind of free dessert we think we can get by telling them it’s a
birthday dinner. Balanced out, of course, by how embarrassing it will be
when the wait staff gathers around the table and sings some silly
made-up birthday song in four discordant keys at once. With all the
rhythm of a three-legged horse at full gallop.
|
Ethnic food
cleansing is a good thing. For one, it will help stop the insidious
spread of fusion food, which is a euphemism for “we have an indecisive
chef with A.D.D. and no self-control.” |
|
Luckily
we’ll soon have a new criterion to factor in, at least if it’s an
Italian restaurant. Starting sometime next year we’ll be able to ask
if it’s an Officially Certified Italian Restaurant. That’s right.
The Italian government, frustrated with not being able to stop the
Mafia, find a fourth tenor, or get the trains to run on time since
Mussolini died 57 years ago, decided to take on something which has been
troubling people for years: How, other than looking for red and white
checked tablecloths and Chianti bottles with half-melted candles stuck
in them, can you know if an Italian restaurant is worth its weight in
mozzarella?
The
Italian Ministry of Agriculture plans to send inspectors to Belgium,
Japan, and the United States to make sure people aren’t eating
Franco-American Spaghettios while watching the Sopranos. Just
kidding. After all, no one would do that. At least not until they come
out with a version in a bag so you can squeeze them into your mouth
while stretched out in your Barcalounger. What they’re actually going
to do is thoroughly check out any Italian restaurant that wants to
display la guarnizione di approvazione in the window. They’ll
take a close look at the quality of the ingredients, how the dishes are
prepared, the service, the authenticity of the menu, the ambience of the
dining room, the wine list, and whether the wait staff puts an ‘a’
on the end-a of-a every-a word-a, in spite of the fact that they’re
all Asian.
The Italians are certainly not the
first ones to want to safeguard their cuisine’s good name. The French
make sure only sparkling wines from Champagne can flaunt that
appellation. Georgia law requires that Vidalia onions come from the
Vidalia area. And the Mexican government actually owns the brand name
“tequila” so they can ensure that it’s being distilled in a
certain region of Mexico, fine people who think they’re cute and
clever by being the 107,976,187th person to call it “to kill ya,”
and collect royalties each time an oldies station plays that
instrumental song by the Champs.
|
Face it, if we were supposed to fill a tortilla with Caesar
salad, corned beef and cabbage, or chicken soup with matzo balls, the
Mayans would have been Irish yuppies wearing yarmulkes. |
|
Ethnic food
cleansing is a good thing. For one, it will help stop the insidious
spread of fusion food, which is a euphemism for “we have an indecisive
chef with A.D.D. and no self-control.” The trend began with pan-Asian
food, which is based on culinary racial profiling—the theory that all
Asian food looks alike so mixing and matching is okay. Aside from the
fact that it should more properly be called wok-Asian food, it’s
contributing to the concept that anything with noodles or rice is Asian.
Tell that to the Italian restaurant inspectors when they check out the
quality of the pasta and risotto.
Then
it spread to Mexican food, where the good old American invention, the
burrito, metamorphosed into a wrap. That’s what it’s called when
they stuff anything they find laying around the kitchen inside a
tortilla. Face it, if we were supposed to fill a tortilla with Caesar
salad, corned beef and cabbage, or chicken soup with matzo balls, the
Mayans would have been Irish yuppies wearing yarmulkes.
Another reason certification of food
authenticity is a good thing is that chefs are increasingly up in arms
over the Americanization of ethnic food. They’re upset because French
dressing shouldn’t be creamy and made with tomatoes. They claim
pepperoni pizza is a shuck since there isn’t any such thing as
pepperoni in Italy. And they bemoan the fortune cookies we get at the
end of Chinese meals because they’re an American invention. In bed.
Hopefully other countries will follow
Italy’s lead and start certifying restaurants. This way we’ll know
if the fries at McDonald’s are truly French, the cheese on your ham
sandwich is yodelingly Swiss, and the toasted muffins being served at
the diner are English enough for the Queen. It’s the future of
dining—accept no substitutes.
©2002 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them in certified Italian.
|
|
