From panettone to tiramisu, many ‘classics’ are in fact recent inventions, as Alberto Grandi has shown

Marxist historian pisses off anti-italian-action 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

  • Trudge [Comrade]English
    10·
    11 months ago

    This month, Meloni’s minister of agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, suggested establishing a task force to monitor quality standards in Italian restaurants around the world. He fears that chefs may get recipes wrong, or use ingredients that aren’t Italian. (Officially listed “traditional food products” now number a staggering 4,820.)

    The EU after decades of financial imperialism hollowed out Italian heavy industries in favor of Germany and France. Italians have to now trademark their food to survive instead of sharing their culture freely with the rest of the world. The EU shall never be forgiven for this.