so bland and dull? Did the Italian immigrants "tone down" the wonderfully flavorful, vibrant foods of Italy for the (at that time) Americans who apparently liked their food, mushy, bland and tasteless?
shareMaybe they couldn't get the correct ingredients.
shareI'm not sure what you mean by "old style." The original cuisine in Europe? When was Italian food in the U.S. ever "bland and dull"?
shareOld style as in early American brought in from Italian emigrants. You know, restaurants with dusty Chianti bottles on the ceiling and the red and whit table cloths, lol.
shareAnd those were considered "bland and dull"?
shareThe ones I've been to? Yes.
shareI think they had to make the food bland and dull back in the day if they wanted to sell food to anglos like you.
Real Italian-American could get better Italian-American food at home, why should they go to a bland restaurant!
I never considered Italian food to be bland nor dull. It has the right amount of flavor.
shareBad cooks were basically exiled from Italy. They had to seek refuge in the USA and other eastern European countries. At the age of eighteen, children were disowned and exiled if they could not make a tasty cannoli, focaccia and spaghetti Bolognese.
Chef Boyardee was one of the first Italian cooks to make it in the USA but he was originally imprisoned for violating the food purity laws of Italy. The Italians gave their imprisoned cooks deals to get out of prison if they left the country. Many of them ended up in the US since it's a land of opportunity for horrible cooks. Sandra Lee became a celebrity chef and she can't even cook. Simlarly, Paris Hilton had a cooking show and she can't even cook.
A lot of people (including myself at one time) think "Chef Boyardee" is a merely a made-up brand name and the "chef" pictured on the label was the creation of an ad agency. Ettore "Hector" Boiardi (1897-1985) was a real chef at a NYC hotel who founded the company in response to the popularity of his spaghetti sauce. The original product was called "Chef Boy-Ar-Dee," a phonetic spelling because people didn't know how to pronounce his name. The hyphens were later dropped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Boiardi
shareI had a feeling this was the case. 😀
shareOlive Garden and Frazoli's are not Italian food they're shit.
Too bad many people consider this swill real Italian food.
It actually all has to do with the seasoning, which consists first of blanching the raw or fresh pasta in a blanching. But only use fresh pasta. Then you toss in in hot nearly boiling cooking oil to further blanch it. Then toss it in a bath of salted and cured pepper butter. Keep tossing it till its well coated. Then you add your sauce. Either a white wine based or a can of tomatos, then your seasonings.
Hope that helps!