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Monday, January 20. 2020

Is/are Spaghetti and Meatballs Italian?

Nope. It's Italian-American. You can't buy Italian-American food in Italy. A review of the history of marinara sauce and Spaghetti and Meatballs.  (h/t Ace)


I can't help it if I am an Italian food snob. Very happy to never see baked ziti again in my life, or meatballs. They make me feel stuffed and just gross and tired. Soak the breadcrumbs in milk for the meatballs. Better that way.


Posted by Bird Dog in Food and Drink at 14:48 | Comments (14) | Trackbacks (0)

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I can't help it if I am an Italian food snob.
Rephrases: I am proud of being an Italian food snob.

My mother made an excellent dish of Scots-Irish spaghetti. A family friend, who spoke only Italian until she started elementary school, thought it was pretty good, also.
#1 Gringo on 2020-01-20 16:14 (Reply)
OK, OK...
#1.1 Bird Dog on 2020-01-21 07:02 (Reply)
Says the guy who just posted a piece on comfort foods that included spaghetti and meatballs. If you're familiar with hearty Tuscan peasant food, you know Italians weren't too dang snobby about what foods they ate - an honest day's labor and an empty stomach makes the simplest dish the finest dining. And if you've got any baked ziti you're tired of looking at, send it my way because I'll eat that stuff 5 days a week.
#2 Jerryskids on 2020-01-20 16:40 (Reply)
Beef Braciole... yummy!
#3 Stargazer on 2020-01-20 16:54 (Reply)
I'd just like to say keep up the good work with this blog. I've been reading it everyday for probably a decade now. Thanks 👍
#4 Mike (Link) on 2020-01-20 16:56 (Reply)
My mother learned to cook Italian when she was a young girl by helping her Italian-American neighbor. I learned by helping my mother. It may not be the same as what they serve in Italy but it is typically really good. I'm not so snobbish about what I eat, I just like good food that is easy to make. Like most things once you've done it after that it is easy to make it again. So I'm not going to walk away from really good food just because it isn't traditional Italian. Baked ziti=good eats.
#5 OneGuy on 2020-01-20 18:32 (Reply)
Grew up in a small Canadian town just upstream from a larger town with a major Italian presence. Said larger town had a "restaurant" inside a small hotel (suspect it was mostly a residential hotel) which gained a lot of renown for its Italian food. The place was spartan: no menu, tables and chairs in rows like a mess hall, and a hole-in-the-wall cupboard to order drinks. But the food was great!! Started out with a salad with a vinegar-oil dressing, then progressed to spaghetti and meatballs (all you could eat spaghetti, meatballs rationed), and then went on to chicken and potatoes. It was great.

Remember one time we returned home for Christmas and Dad took us down there. We were peacefully eating when some newcomers - sitting at their table for some time - asked Dad about the menu. They were told was no menu but the food would flow out.

The hotel burned down; the ladies running the restaurant moved on, and the goodness continues:
https://colandertrail.ca/our-food/dinner-menu/

If you're ever in the Trail area (north of Spokane), do try it.
#6 Frances on 2020-01-20 21:28 (Reply)
You can now buy American-Chinese food in China.

I like American-Italian food. Maybe we are improving things. Hell, we improved the ideas of a hundred other countries by running them through the freedom cycle here. Why not food? I like American-Irish and American-English better than the originals. Swedish meatballs are way better than lutfisk. Do any Jews think they ate better in Poland than New York?
#7 Assistant Village Idiot on 2020-01-20 23:40 (Reply)
Popped up to Bologna from Naples this weekend with Mrs. B. Had one of the best lasagnas we've ever had at Gessetto Ristorante ("nine stories!!"). Strongly recommended, and make sure you get a reservation... Ciao, Bull
#8 Bull on 2020-01-21 01:58 (Reply)
Hard to beat a good meatball. My husband makes a lovely Mediterranean dish with lamb meatballs in a tomato sauce, which also includes a few poached eggs floating.

I have no problem with Italian-American food, with one exception: the use of not-very-good canned tomato sauce. It's amazing how much better a dish is when you take a very few minutes to make up a tomato sauce out of tomatoes, and control your own seasonings. I don't know what they put in the cans, but the convenience doesn't make up for it.
#9 Texan99 on 2020-01-21 08:52 (Reply)
One of the nicer things to have happened in my lifetime is the great improvement in the quality of canned, bottled, and frozen foods. There are many good prepared Italian sauces in any large grocery store. And almost all canned vegetables are pretty good.

The problem is that many people have food superstitions and repeat the cant from 50 years ago. Just because Byrd's Eye didn't get the fish sticks right in 1950 doesn't mean that nobody gets it right today.
#10 bob sykes (Link) on 2020-01-21 09:13 (Reply)
I love meatballs! I don't eat the pasta any more - I just cook up the meatballs and some spicy marinara and eat them straight.
#11 NJSoldier on 2020-01-21 12:03 (Reply)
Over the last twenty years, a lot of Italian restaurants have gone out of business. America's tastes seem to be changing. But there are still a few big chains that serve Italian food. The Spaghetti Factory, The Olive Garden, and Domino's also sells pasta.

I think that a big issue is that Americans are getting older, and people just can't handle those carbs anymore. A plate of spaghetti puts me to sleep! Maybe those restaurants should start serving green kale spaghetti. Or squash spaghetti. Actually, they shouldn't serve squash spaghetti, because it's evil.
#12 Ron Lieberman on 2020-01-21 12:32 (Reply)
Are spaghetti and meatballs Italian?

Try buying a Pepperoni pizza in Italy. You get a pizza with little green peppers on it. Pickled pepperoncinis.

Because Pepperoni is an American Salami.
#13 Bill Adams (Link) on 2020-01-21 15:06 (Reply)

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