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Comment by bshimmin | Hacker News Reader

I lived in Bologna for a couple of years. The pizza there is so damn good I think you really should just be grateful and accept whatever they give you. Once you start believing that you can have a pizza rossa with mozzarella, it's a slippery slope until you end up with a "deep-pan" pizza with chicken on it.

(As another commenter says, this whole situation seems utterly improbable. Pizzaioli/e are generally friendly and happy to make whatever you want, within reason, and will just gently rib you if you order something silly, especially if you're a foreigner. At least, that has always been my experience, anyway.)

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this is far from being a rare thing. I have had this happen to me at a local Italian restaurant, where I ordered a Pizza Vegetaria with parma ham. The chef outright refused to make it, but after a while agreed to make a pizza with tomato, Mozarella, ham and vegetables

Well, think about it. People would consider it very strange to order a vegetarian pizza with ham in English, too.

I've ordered vegetarian with bacon or bacon and pepperoni or just pepperoni. Why? Because A.) It's almost always cheaper than adding half a dozen vegetables to some other pizza B.) It's also faster to order with less risk of someone getting the order wrong on.

Reason A is a good reason to refuse to make your order.

Apropos of nothing much, I spent six months working in Naples, billeted in a run-down coastal resort town some 15km west of the centre, on the coast. There was some adequate pizza, and some truly awful pizza, and at one point we got so sick of the only food options being pizza or pasta that we flew a cook in from England to make us a curry. A local cook was tasked with preparing the rice, which he got wrong.

I suspect that out of the cities, the quality of food drops off significantly, and the range of foods, which was always pretty unimpressive in Italy, certainly drops off. This is going to be true everywhere, of course, but I suspect countries coasting on a reputation of good food suffer this to a greater degree.

> the only food options being pizza or pasta

> the range of foods, which was always pretty unimpressive in Italy

You know nothing, Jon Snow: http://www.giallozafferano.it/ricette-cat/

The fact that what you eat before the main course is called the before-pasti makes it pretty clear. The word for meal is basically also the word for pasta.

The last time someone took issue with my opinion on this, they gave me a list of foods demonstrating the huge range. It was a few different kinds of pasta, and some sauce that goes on pasta. You have done better than the last person, but the point isn't that there's anything wrong with Italian food. It's that in many parts of Italy, that's all there is, and they seem to be proud of this limited range. Just Italian food. Compared to the richness of food from a much broader range of origin countries that is on offer in many other countries, it can't compete, and it appears limited and dull.

I had to look up the Jon Snow reference. I though it would be some clever quip about the veteran British journalist. Turned out to be a meme based on a similarly dull soap opera. Spare me (although as a way to soften telling someone they don't know anything, it's not bad).

Here's someone else failing to find a curry in Naples: http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187785-i421-k2751875...

The word for meal in Italian, "pasto", comes from the Latin for "fed" ("pasco"), whereas the word "pasta" derives from a word meaning something like paste or dough. So "antipasto" means "before the meal", not "before the pasta".

I stand corrected and I thank you for the mature, sensible way you went about it.

> The fact that what you eat before the main course is called the before-pasti makes it pretty clear. The word for meal is basically also the word for pasta.

pasto (plural "pasti") = course, pasta (plural "paste") = dried paste made with wheat and watter

> It's that in many parts of Italy, that's all there is, and they seem to be proud of this limited range.

That's wrong. Regional cuisine in Italy is obviously richer than the cuisine of the whole UK, and if all you can manage to find in a city like Naples is pasta and pizza, maybe you need adult supervision.

Here are some hints for the next time you end up in the area:

- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187785-d669844...

- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187785-d800185...

- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187785-d532823...

- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187785-d483081...

etc.

> dull soap opera

It's from Game of Thrones, not Downton Abbey.

> failing to find a curry in Naples

At some point you're going to need to learn how to cook. The sooner, the better.

> if all you can manage to find in a city like Naples is pasta and pizza, maybe you need adult supervision.

To be fair, he said he was 15km (9 miles) from the center of Naples. Wikipedia tells me that Naples is 117km² (45mi²), which simplifying to a circular city, means a ~6.1km (3.8mi) radius. So, it sounds like he wasn't so much "in Naples" as "near Naples".

Four Italian restaurants. Did you completely miss the point? Of course you did.

Regional cuisine in Italy is obviously richer than the cuisine of the whole UK

I live in a town far smaller than Naples. I have, almost on my doorstep, Thai, Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, on and on. Repeat around the country. Britain is far better for food than Italy. I can far more easily access a far greater range of food in Britain than Italy. I bet that violates some ingrained cultural belief, but facts have to be faced.

It's from Game of Thrones, not Downton Abbey.

Game of Thrones is a soap opera.

At some point you're going to need to learn how to cook. The sooner, the better.

That was an immature, juvenile response and you know it. Grow up.

> Four Italian restaurants. Did you completely miss the point? Of course you did.

The point was that Italian food is more than pasta and pizza.

>Britain is far better for food than Italy I guess that this statement summarizes the real root of the problem

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