Kebabs: the new hot potatoes

by Neil Thomas
January 22nd, 2010

It used to be that music was the ‘food of love’. Now it seems as if ‘food is the music of love’. Today’s romantics are more likely to put a plate of puttanesca on the table than a Puccini opera on the ‘turntable’ in the pursuit of love (highly appropriate when you consider that pasta puttanesca is actually ‘whore’s pasta’ to an Italian.)

These days, food is recognised as being a crucial part of a country’s culture. Culinary expertise has been elevated (it seems) to the status of an art form, and the leading chefs of our time (take a bow Jamie Oliver, Ferran Adrià and Raymond Blanc) are as famous as the musicians, artists and writers (if not more so).

However, whilst each country pursues the intensive search for its authentic culinary roots (at both national and regional level), each must also acknowledge the significant impact of foods from other cultures on their own cuisine – foods imported by travellers (since travellers first started travelling foodstuffs, spices and techniques have been freely transferred) as well as immigrants. The resultant fusion cooking has added to the mix of different food cultures in the melting pot of each country.

This food ‘test’ is seen by some as a loss of identity, by others as the transformation into a rich multi-cultural mishmash. In Britain, for example, curry now vies with (and no doubt surpasses) fish and chips for the title of ‘most popular takeaway’.

In Italy, an experiment with gourmet kebabs (stuffed into pitta bread) in Turin has been met with enthusiasm, but last year there were protests against kebab shops in Lucca, Bergamo, Genoa and Prato. Even French butter was forced off the Italian Parliament’s menu. Forgetting the fact that the tomato, a bona fide Italian deity, was actually introduced to the country from South America, protests have recently been made in Italy against Chinese vegetables grown by Chinese immigrants. Some Italians have even decried the growing popularity of couscous, citing it as a threat to polenta. It seems culinary heritage can sometimes be a refuge for bigots.

The latest book in our series on national cultures, Speak the Culture: Italy, will be pointing up the importance of food and its place in Italian culture, revealing how foodstuffs (be it polenta or kebab), customs and social etiquette take their place in the rich, enduring stew of national culture.