Regional versus National Cuisine in Italy

What we call “identity” means cultural, more than political unity, that’s why we can talk about an “Italian identity” before the country is politically unified in the second half of the XIXth century. In fact, an “Italian” gastronomic culture does exist from the late Middle Ages. It is characterized by the pre-eminence of the city, but one that implies a deep inter-action between the cities and the surrounding territory: the city both dominates and represents the countryside; it “synthetizes” rural culture (in a centripetal way) and “exports” it as it operates as market (in a centrifugal way).

        Each different urban reality is part of a larger network because of the exchanges in products and knowledge that share each local identity in a broader national one. This is a phenomenon peculiar to Italy and produces a sort of “democratic” gastronomy, founded on exchange and knowledge (of each other). When a “national” gastronomy is codified it always happens by putting together and sharing what is locally defined. No central authority can be found, either in gastronomy or in politics. This is the secret of Italian weakness, but also of its strength and richness of culture and flavors.

               This peculiarity of the Italian identity, predicated as it is on a patchwork of local realities all connected and ready for exportation to the next village or to the four corners of the universe, has nothing to do with the frequently flaunted concept of “regional cuisine”, which is today evoked with reference to the administrative regions, created in 1946, activated in 1970. These can only work in a political, not a cultural, sense. The 19 regions of Italy are political administrative units that do not necessarily coincide with its historical-anthropological reality.Italian identity is not a regional one: it is national and local (urban).