Where in Italy is the best to learn about Italian cooking?
Friday, October 30th, 2009 at
8:23 pm
I'm a student that is going to a technical culinary program next year and after i have plans to move to Europe for a couple of years to work as a chef in France and Italy. I was wondering where in Italy is the best place to learn about classical Italian Cuisine. I want to know if i am better off in the country or in the city? I am also looking for a full cultural experience. Thanks
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Tagged with: culinary program • europe • experience thanks • italian cuisine • italy
Filed under: Italian Language
Actually, a "Italian cuisine" doesn’t exist, but lots of different Italian cookings in the different regions. Everywhere in Italy you can find restaurants which serve basical Italian specialities of pasta or pizza, but every region has its own features. I think you’d better choose a middle town, look for a job in a little typical restaurant and learn the secrets of the local cooks. For instance: Pavia, Mantova, Verona, Parma, Ferrara, Ravenna, Siena, Perugia, Orvieto, Viterbo, L’Aquila, Caserta, Lecce, Siracusa (all of them are also very beautiful towns).
In the biggest towns you can obviously find excellent restaurants and cooks, but on the average typical culinary traditions are less strong.
Different regions here have different specialties. It would be hard to go wrong no matter what region you picked. Certainly Emilia Romagna is an excellent place for food. You might actually want to spend some time in more than one region and cover a little of both city and country life.
For cuisine and culture you need to go to Tuscany.
Tuscan cuisine is regarded as te pinnacle of Italian cuisine by Italians and Tuscany is also the most varied and gorgeous cultural hub.
Florence is the obvious first choice but any of the Tuscan towns are lovely. Avoid the coutryside simply because you will be in the middle of nowhere and it will be very hard to have a social life – save that for day trips. There are no big towns in that part of Italy that will swallow you up.
With culinary training in Tuscany you will have te best chance to get a job as a chef anywhere in Italy or France and you will just be saturated in beauty, history and Italian tradition.
Tuscany is the centre of the italian art and it’s the region where italian language was born, but tuscan cuisine is quite poor compared to other regional cuisine like "cucina emiliano-romagnola" or like "cucina napoletana" (just to nominate two of them). I’m napulitain, it’s 19 years I live in Tuscany and love it, think Tuscany is probably the most beautiful italian region, but the cuisine is just good, not great. The sweets in particular are very elementar (there is just an excellent gelato, but that’s a sicilian invention). Like Conley said any italian region got its own cuisine. Actually italian cuisine doesn’t really exist, or better it exists but it’s a recent invention. The traditional italian cuisine is regional. "Italian cuisine" is just a very useful market label to sell the "made in Italy", it’s much more comfy than selling sicilian cuisine or roman cuisine, and all the others.
Bologna! it is a very cool city and the best for italian cooking.
In my opinion Sicilia.
Italy has got several flavors…
Emilia Romagna e Toscana cuisine is good, but Sicily is the best….Really…