Saturday, January 31, 2009

The Penne is Mightier than the Kebab











News from the motherland is that some Italian burgs are banning adding any new establishments that offer "ethnic foods."

[Side note: One of my favorite signs in the local supermarket is the one designating a certain aisle for "Ethnic Foods" -- things like soy sauce and salsa, which are probably in the refrigerators of ninety percent or more of households in America. That may be surpassed in entertainment value, however, by the presence of an "Ethnic Products" section in the local drug emporium -- and what they mean by so-called "ethnic" includes products such as Murray's Hair Pomade, Ultra Sheen, and Ambi lotion.]

Anyway, apparently some Italians don't like the plethora of kebab and shawarma shops in their piazzas. Interestingly, I believe I've heard people who've spent time in Italy talk about how "un-diverse" the cuisine is, and that it can be very hard for someone used to American-style variety to try to find good, affordable Thai or Japanese food; I suppose it depends on the city.

As the article points out, the supreme irony is that many staples of Italian cuisine, including the New World tomato that is paramount in the south, are of non-native origin. One wonders what the Romans were eating; I've never really thought much about that. Spit-roasted lamb with rosemary and a side of bulgur wheat?

There always seem to be people who become nervous or feel under attack somehow due to the penetration of various "ethnic" businesses or communities in their midst. Possibly it's just due to fear or dealing with the unknown. I don't understand it well because I've mostly surrounded myself with people who love ethnic variety, for lack of a better phrase. Though I did argue with my brother a couple Christmases ago because he couldn't understand why, and seemed to be slightly perturbed by the fact that it seemed that almost every gas station in New Jersey is owned by Punjabis (he may have actually uttered the word "towelhead," but I choose not to dwell on that too much). I still don't understand why it even bothered him, although I feel that part of it has to do with the influence of my conservative, xenophobic father (with whom I'm no longer in contact).

I also recall working with a sweet Jewish woman named Lil almost twenty years ago. She and her husband had recently moved back to New Jersey after living for many years in Miami. She had rather benignly said something once about how Miami was "almost like a foreign country" with all kinds of Latin American restaurants and shops and so many people speaking Spanish. I naively and guilelessly made a comment about how "that must be kind of nice and interesting sometimes," to which she shot back very bluntly, "Not in my country!!" Needless to say, we changed the topic of conversation rather quickly.

I love ethnic enclave communities, as much for the culinary variety they provide as anything else. When I go back to New Jersey, I love the fact that Oak Tree Road in Edison is a true Little India of restaurants and shops. I love the fact that the neighborhood in which my grandmother grew up has again become a very Polish area (if it ever, in fact, stopped being one). Then again, I grew up in a very different time, in a New Jersey that was already becoming very ethnically diverse with the "new immigrants" of the sixties and seventies. And of course, that was after the great immigrant waves of the early twentieth century, the result of which made it seem that almost everyone one knew was either Italian, Polish, Irish, Hungarian, Greek, German, or some combination thereof.

I wish Italy luck in sorting this out. Perhaps the city of Lucca may be written off as a provincial, closed-minded backwater, but the fact that this is spreading to Milan in the wake of rising popularity of the Northern League does not really bode well. In the meantime, Viva il Döner Kebap!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Italians need to understand what it takes to become the right kind of white people. They need to read this blog post: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/19/7-diversity/

M. Knoester said...

Considering a kebab is about half saturated fat and half salt, I'm all for getting rid of them!

"The worst doners inspectors came across contained 1,990 calories before salad and sauces - over 95% of a woman's recommended daily calories, 346% of a woman's saturated fat intake and 277% of an adult's daily salt intake."

And if that didn't put you off:

"Some 35% of labels listed a different meat species than that actually found in the kebab.

"Six kebabs were found to include pork when it had not been declared as an ingredient. Two of the six were described as Halal - food or drink permitted for Muslims, which must not contain pork."

I shudder to think what the species besides pork were...

Joe said...

SK: I came across some of those headlines when I was looking up info about kebabs, but hadn't read the stories. Thanks. Maybe the quality is better regulated in Germany?

Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

It seems that Safeway is particularly fond of having an "ethnic" food aisle. I always want to ask why they don't have a WASP food aisle, but I guess that's pretty much the rest of the store.

M. Knoester said...

Joe, isn't everything?

Anonymous said...

I wish Italy luck in sorting this out.

Pfffft. And you call ME condescending!

Anonymous said...

By the way, since you speculated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cuisine

Salty Miss Jill said...

What about the yuppie food aisle: the eight dollar boxes of organic macaroni and cheese and roganic chicken pot pies?

Salty Miss Jill said...

You haven't posted in a while. What's up?
Missing you,
SMJ
xoxoxoxo