Comment by sklivvz1971 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sklivvz1971 | Hacker News Reader

It seems more a well researched article on whatever Italian bakery is available abroad, but certainly not a realistic description of Italian food variety.

Being Italian, it's always a bit funny to see Italian food being described from outside. The article is missing some important points about Italian bakery. In Italy you can find "panifici", which sell both savoury and sweet baked products, from pizza to bread to biscotti and other sweet non-refrigerated cakes. You can also find "pasticcerie", which sell only sweet products, both baked, frozen and semifrozen, from cakes to pastries to meringata. Finally you can find "gelaterie" which sell mostly ice-cream based product, but also other frozen and semi-frozen products. The selection given, thus, is misleading because it's leaving out a huge selection of similar products which are majorly important in Italian cuisine, starting with gelato based treats.

Furthermore, Italian cuisine is strongly regional. Bakery in Naples is completely different from bakery in Genoa or Venice. The article presents a subset of items from some of these regions, but is in no way a complete or realistic description of what one can find in Italian bakeries. Some examples here (this is really a tiny subset!): http://www.dissapore.com/grande-notizia/i-migliori-pani-ital...

I understand the article doesn't claim completeness, but they are presenting a glass of water and calling it a sea.

For what it's worth, this article is probably better titled "the Italian-American Bakery Explained"; over the last century and a half Italian-American culture has evolved in to something with roots in, but distinct and different from, the culture of Italy itself. It's largely based on the culture of Sicily and the South, since that's where so many Italian immigrants came from, but years and years in America have shifted it in to a sort of separate culture. It's especially telling that this is from a New Jersey-focused website, since NJ is one of the epicenters of Italian-American culture in the US.

I'm a fourth-generation Italian-American myself, and I've recently been learning Italian and gotten interested in geneology and tracing the cultural roots of my family. It's really interesting to see how true Italian culture is similar to what I grew up with, but also very different.

Yep, the article should be explicit about that. Calling American-Italian food "Italian" is incorrect, but also incredibly parochial.

It's a regional news outlet, writing an article about regional businesses. There is literally nobody within 300 miles of Newark (a region of about 100M people) interested in the topic who doesn't know what they are referring to.

Calling anything "Italian" would be equally parochial, as Naples, Milan, Sicily, etc have broad differences in cuisine and culture.

This is actually the common usage. I've never heard anybody say they're going out to an American-Italian restaurant.

Along the same lines, when I tell my friends that I'm going to a Chinese restaurant, they know exactly what I mean. And no, it doesn't mean I'm taking the next flight out to Shanghai to eat.

The common usage in america.

It may come as a shock to you, but there are also Italian restaurants in other countries - not just Italy and America.

The same pattern is observed in other countries. In India, a Chinese restaurant will typically serve Indian Chinese cuisine rather than Chinese cuisine as it is eaten in China.

Yes, the common usage in America, because the article is about Italian restaurants in an American city.

Do you think somebody reading nj.com is really likely to be confused about what country the restaurants being discussed are in? This is like complaining about a US newscast referring to "our nation's capital" because every country has a different capital.

I live in the Boston area and I most definitely say "Chinese-American" when discussing potential restaurants. For example if my friend asked about Mary Chung's in Cambridge, that's Chinese-American, where as the Shanghai Gate in Alston is Shanghainese. Of course I don't always know. I also would refer to pizza/sub shops that are everywhere around here as Italian-American if someone asked, as opposed to the upscale places in the North End. I may be wrong about my labels, but I do use them.

If I want to make this distinction I usually use the term "Chinese takeout."

No, not really. The audience is American, the author is American; nobody is confused about what is meant.

I find a lot of Europeans - particularly Irish - to get unduly upset when Americans use the term "Irish" to mean "Irish American". Sometimes it gets downright childish, ie "you're not really Irish we are!".

People should pick up on the context a bit.

9/10 they aren't using it to mean 'Irish American' though. Many, many Americans I know and have met claim to be 'Irish' despite they and their parents never having set foot in the place and they genuinely mean they are of Irish nationality. Sure it can be used as shorthand for 'Irish American' but that's generally not what is meant (in my experience). Ireland's diaspora is more than 10x the country's population so it's definitely not something we rebel against or dislike. There are LOTS of people abroad who can rightly claim to be Irish. When you claim it with virtually no actual ties to the country mainly so you can try to claim some stereotype it's irritating. Irish people are generally pretty proud of our American links and contributions. "you're not really Irish we are!" is not a thing.

Of course they mean Irish American. What else could they mean? I don't think the Irish (in Ireland) are even on the radar. There's a real misunderstanding Europeans have of the European diaspora in general - they think they can understand it in the context of still being in Europe, but you can't.

In fairness to the author, "Italian bakery" does not necessarily denote a bakery in Italy. I mean a bakery in Italy is just a bakery: in ordinary conversation two Romans would not normally apply an adjective indicating 'Italian' when describing an ordinary bakery located in Rome.

'Italian' is generally useful (and hence used) when it distinguishes between bakeries and the common context for 'Italian bakery' is in places like New Jersey where it is likely to clarify what a person is talking about.

Perhaps there's an analogy in that 'Italian American' is often useful and 'Italian Italian' probably less so. Or perhaps not.

Thanks for an interesting read about Italian bakeries! I do feel compelled to point out, though, that an "Italian bakery" is a very specific, regional thing easily recognized by the readers of this local newspaper. If the term were a little more honest it would be called an "Italian American" bakery, and as a visitor and native Italian you would find quite a bit more to take issue with than the selection! What is undeniable though, is how delicious and truly special the cookies are at a good Italian bakery. Some of the best things I've ever eaten are from Gencarelli's Bakery in Bloomfield NJ.

I think it's important to keep in mind that this is NJ.com (I used to work there!) and their audience (people in New Jersey) is very well defined. Their audience knows exactly what the article is talking about. Every once in a while they have a breakout article like this. They're closely associated with Newark and the Star-Ledger, and I wouldn't be shocked to learn out that the article was tailored to spur discussion over the merits of Italian vs. Portuguese bakeries Since Newark has a large, and more recent, Portuguese-American population.

I think when they say "Italian" "Italian-American" is implied. After all, the author describes himself as "Italian" and these are all the foods I'd expect to see in an "Italian bakery" in the United States.

Ha, this, and not just this but what Italian bakery are you likely to find gelatto and tiramisu in? I think maybe the author has only been to Battale's Eataly in NYC, which is more like "open floor Italian-ish gourmet market" than a bakery.

Most of them? You think a guy named Peter Genovese has only been to one Italian bakery in his life?

Which one will sell me Briscola cards? :)

replace 'italian' in your post with chinese, french, american bbq, new californian, brazilian, arab, mexican, etc, etc, etc.

but of course, the cuisine you understand the most personally is the one that is most persecuted, right? the one that everyone gets wrong, because it's so nuanced and special, more special than anyone else's cuisine, because don't you see, italians invented civilized cuisine, you heathen?

welcome to how the world interprets regional/national cuisine. it's all wrong. none of it is correct, because it is a foreign understanding. italy is not special in this regard.

I never spoke about persecution, and having lived half my life abroad (France, Singapore, Portugal and UK) I know pretty well multiple cuisines and I do appreciate them. I did not post the above lacking understanding of how different cuisines have different stories to tell. However I do feel that your comment is just a dismissal based on a partial understanding of my previous post.

Italy is particularly interesting for being regional and so is India, for example. Chinese cuisine I would not even call regional so far apart are the different cooking styles.

French cuisine is also regional but way more uniform than Italian cooking.

Keep in mind that Italy has not been a united country for long at all, and for example people from different regions speak different languages (there are 4 official languages in Italy, but probably at least a dozen spoken recognized languages such as Friulano, Sardo, etc.). Many of our grandparents (if not parents) did not speak Italian as a first language, that came about starting from the 50's with national television and internal migration.

So you can imagine that traditions and cooking are completely different from place to place. For the same reason there are hundreds of types of pasta for example.

>(there are 4 official languages in Italy, but probably at least a dozen spoken recognized languages such as Friulano, Sardo, etc.)

There is only one "official" language (Italian) since 1861.

Each region has its own dialect, that may (or may not) be either very similar to italian or very different from it, that makes more than 12.

You are right that until the '50's and even later, the whole 60's for a large part of the population Italian was a "second language", television started broadcasting in 1954 but it was a "luxury" item and had some diffusion only in the second half of the 60's

German, French and Slovenian are "official" languages in the sense that there are areas where these languages are used by local governments together with Italian. Eg in the Bolzano/Bozen province you can deal with most institutions in German.

Besides Italian, there are 12 officially recognized languages (Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian), four of which are co-official languages (French in Val d'Aosta, Ladin and German in South Tyrol and Slovene in Friuli).

Officially recognized languages can be taught in schools for example, along with Italian. Co-official languages enjoy equal status with Italian, all road signs are bilingual, all official state material is bilinugal, etc.

Besides there are many other dozens beyond the official languages, to get an idea of how crazy this is Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy#Languages, http://www.parlamento.it/parlam/leggi/99482l.htm

Not really-really.

There is only one official language, Italian and 12 minorities which cultures and languages are officially "protected" or "safeguarded". That is the essence of the Law 482/99 you cited.

In two border regions (namely Trentino Alto Adige for German and Val d'Aosta for French) the population speaking the "other" language is so vast that there are special provisions that make those regions "bilingual", but in Friuli Slovenian is spoken by a minority and has much less relevance.

Albanian, Catalan, Greek, etc. are spoken by very small commmunities (still coming from the original country where the language is spoken) that "immigrated" in Italy centuries ago, and often they diverge from the "original".

Sardinian is instead a "self-standing dialect", a local historical language of the island, that is "protected", but nothing more (you don't have official state documents written in Sardinian, nor official signs, etc.).

The "tower of babel" (that was a problem in the past) did not came however from those "foreign" languages, after all Italy has century old tradition of trading with France, Germany, etc., but rather from the dialects, and from the lack of schooling/education.

Dialects are local and independent from other European languages (though of course they may well have been influenced from them (take the dialects of Sicily as an example) you can find in it words that clearly come from Spanish or French (or even Arabic).

The people that immigrated to the US obviously largely came from the poorest (and most isolated) regions and the dialect they spoke had very little in common with Italian, a large number of those people couldn't read or write (at least not properly) in Italian and for tens of years, they had no or little contacts with Italy, it is only too normal that words changed in the meantime.

I've literally copied half my post from Wikipedia, and the rest from the actual law I linked.

Sure, and it is the other half that is not entirely accurate.

The Law you linked to is clear enough, at least in the first three articles, even a google translate is enough to understand the ideas behind it.

> Italy is particularly interesting for being regional and so is India, for example. Chinese cuisine I would not even call regional so far apart are the different cooking styles.

This separation of cuisines is absolutely true for India as well. Some of the same ingredients are used due to geography with very different spices and preparations.

I don't think that parent wanted to be pretentious, as an Italian I was confused by the article too, then I realized that it's a description of the italian sweets that you can find in a certain part of the US. It seems natural to me that someone would try to skew the usually US-centric view of HN by stating their experience.

Your first paragraph makes your point. The rest is an over-the-top response to a fairly innocuous comment.

Italians had civilized cuisine before every other one you mentioned except one

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