Dining Like an Italian

Posted by Barbara Rogers Nov 6, 2006

This doesn’t mean that food traditions are so revered that they can never change. Quite the opposite, it’s the infinite flexibility that makes Italian cooking so well loved by chefs and cooks everywhere.

But when dining in Italy, you’ll blend in better and feel more at home at the table if you know a few basic customs (and forget a few myths).

• Pronounce bruschetta, the pre-dinner or apertif snack of tasty toppings spread on toasted bread, broos-KEH-tah. In Italian, ch is pronounced as the English k.
• Don’t ask for butter for your dinner bread. Butter is served only at breakfast.
• Don’t expect – or ask for -- dipping oil for your bread. That’s a foreign invention that most Italians find bizarre.
• Eat your spaghetti with a fork, not with a spoon and fork. Pull a few strands aside and twirl them gracefully around your fork before propelling them to your mouth.
• Don’t ask for grated cheese, especially for a dish containing seafood. If the chef intends cheese to be part of a dish, it will be offered. Italians have a built-in horror of combining cheese and seafood. If it’s done, let the chef be the one to create the dish.
• Eat fruit, if offered whole, with silverware (except for grapes). Taking a bite out of a whole apple is considered barbaric.
• Order Cappuccino in the morning only, never after a meal. If you don’t want espresso after dinner, ask for “café Americano” but expect watered-down espresso, not Maxwell House.