Marxist historian pisses off 
by exposing them to reality
Grandi has made himself unpopular in some quarters by criticising Italy’s mighty food and drink sector, which, by some estimates, accounts for a quarter of GDP. On the podcast, he jokes he should only leave his house “with personal security guards, like Salman Rushdie”. In 2019, the Italian ambassador to Turkey reprimanded Grandi at a conference in Ankara after Grandi ridiculed Italy’s 800 protected designations, products whose quality is recognised by the EU as inextricably linked to their area. At Les Mots literary festival in Aosta in 2018, he was attacked by a Roman presenter who, offended by Grandi’s claims about carbonara, “called [him] every name in the book” in front of a dumbfounded live audience.
Read this to piss off the Italian in your life
But Dr. Pagliacci, I am the Italian in my life
someone please hit me with a non-paywalled link so I can piss myself off a bit (and learn something, I’m kinda curious now)
TLDR most Italian “traditional foods” were just made up in the 1950s
Yea, after reading, this is really most of it, though the particulars are pretty interesting and the American influence a lot stronger than I was aware. Also, that bit about parmesan is hilarious, how the most traditionally prepared parmesan these days comes from Wisconsin because they never changed their recipe whereas parmesan in Italy became a harder cheese over the years. It’s one of the few actual old things in italian cuisine and it totally changed throughout the centuries, disproving the whole ‘tradition means never changing’ thing
Also, Gastronationalism is a baller word
Cool little article overall, though I’m not really pissed off.
What pissed me off more, was learning those cool little stove top espresso kettles are made from aluminium because the fascists made it the national metal
Replaced with an archive link: https://archive.li/fOzXf