How do they get the flavor out of the food in the states?
I’ve been back in Los Angeles for a week now, and last night we went to an Italian restaurant for dinner for the first time since I got back. This may not seem like a big deal, but for us, it is always a tragedy.
The restaurant was Pomodoro in Woodland Hills. I don’t want to say it is a bad place by American standards. Actually, it is one of the better chains. It is just that I was in Italy having the real thing a week ago, and by those standards, even the best place in the states simply stinks.
To give you an example of what I mean, let me go back about a month. I was having a mega craving for roasted chicken and roasted potatoes. In the states, we would generally call it Tuscan chicken, since it is generally a central Italian thing. In Soriano, there is a place that makes roasted chicken and potatoes that are to die for, and this craving I was having needed to be addressed.
We decided to go to a place called Rosti in Westlake Village. It is a tiny chain of just 4 restaurants. We had been there in the past many times, and it had always been good. In fact, it has always been the closest thing to real central Italian food we had ever eaten in the states. The problem was that I was craving the real thing, not the ‘closest thing’. I had the memory of Italy in my head, not the memory of a cheap imitation of Italy.
So we go to Rosti and order Caprese, followed by roasted chicken and potatoes.
The Caprese was a disaster. But t wasn’t their fault… it was ours. We had the memory of the real thing. Caprese is pretty simple… it is hard to mess up. I mean, Mozzarella, Tomato, basil, and oil… How hard can it be? The problem is that the tomatoes we get here in L.A. taste like water, not tomatoes. The mozzarella is never fresh, and even at best, it has absolutely no flavor. So in the end, you get something that looks like Caprese, but tastes like nothing.
Then came the main course. The plate looked awesome! There were my potatoes and my roasted chicken… Yummmmm!!! That is, until my knife hit the chicken. It didn’t feel right. When I tasted it, I suddenly frowned and wondered how they got the chicken flavor out of the chicken. Then I tried the potatoes, and I could feel the effects of the microwave used to heat them in my mouth. I was devastated. It was like craving an In n’ Out burger and settling for a Big Mac. The problem was that this is as good as it gets. The only way to satisfy the craving was 8.000 miles away. Why can’t we make decent Italian food here?
Actually, it is our own fault. We live in a move ‘em in and move ‘em out of the country. It starts with the farmers and ends with your meal. The farmers mass produce everything, having to make a bigger tomato that gets to the market faster so they can grow more tomatoes. Technology gets us bigger and cheaper tomatoes faster than ever. The price of this is the flavor. The chicken ranchers are replaced by chicken ‘mills’ that pump them full of hormones, giving us bigger chickens than ever. They are big and cheap, so who will notice that they don’t actually taste like chickens?
As we walk into restaurants they take our orders as soon as possible and deliver us our food as quickly as possible. We mistake this for good and fast service, but it isn’t that at all. In fact, they want us in and out quickly so they can get reuse your table as many times as possible that evening. But the food just doesn’t cook that fast, now does it? So they have to precook as much as possible. They can’t waste the time and energy to make things from scratch, so they buy the majority of what you eat in frozen form from a huge distributor. Food is prepped quickly and reheated so that they can use fewer people in the kitchen with higher efficiency, all the while getting your order to you in lightning speed.
The process is beautiful, and the only thing you lose along the way is the flavor. But even that is ok since we are preconditioned to think that is the way it is supposed to be.
Then we wonder why Italian food is so much better in Italy. Go figure!
Co-Founder of Culture Discovery Vacations. I am a native American from Los Angeles that has been living with one foot in Italy and the other in the US for more than 30 years. I usually write about oddities I see in Italian culture from an American perspective, and the humor I find in it. However, after decades of living in both countries, I often see the reverse as well. That is, where the Italians got it right, and we can certainy learn from them!
Comments
Catherine
AuthorIt’s so true. After being there a few times, I hate the food here.
.-= Catherine´s last blog ..What’s Cooking Wednesday: Spinach with Lemon =-.
Kalyson
AuthorOh, you got that right. I’m an amateur cook, but a damn good one. And a foodie. So I marvel at the stuff they call food in this country. It is so sad.
People really don’t know any better.
I don’t like the wines made here either, for that matter. Napa is the worst, but California wines in general stink. Over-oaked, too hot (i.e., very high alcohol), raisiney, pruney, candied (even when dry), unbalanced…. I could go on. But, for a country full of people raised on Pepsi-cola and Orange Crush, what do we expect? Plus, they don’t care if it goes with the meal — what they really want is to just get a buzz, or out-and-out plastered.
I really think the reason Americans have latched on to “Chardonnay” is because they like the sound of the name and think it has “Caché”. Brother.
At least I can cook my own food. Rarely go out to dinner, needless to say. There are a few places in San Francisco and New York that are good, although I haven’t tried Italian specifically.
There are a few wine-makers in California, Oregon and the Finger Lakes area that make decent wines. But not many.
Michael Kovnick
Authorheheh… It reminds me of how Jägermeister is something to ‘get drunk with’ in the states, and in Europe, it is something to help you digest a heavy meal 🙂
JJ Smith
AuthorI can sympathize though the food is better than when I was growing up in the 1960s. My mother, a daughter of immigrants who arrived in the early 1910s, fully embraced the emerging TV dinners, convenience and junk food trend pushed by corporations. The Science! New and improved! We ate it all, the Ring Dings, Scooter Pies, Ho Hos, Twinkies… Boxed mac and cheese, Spaghetti-Os, Tang, Pop Tops, Eggo waffles, Jello, Cool Whip… She did cook real food from time to time – whole fish, chicken livers, cow’s tongue, kidneys but it’s sad how much damage was done to generations of Americans regarding culinary standards and the increasing obesity as a result. The slow food/local food to table movement has helped tremendously but we still have a long road to go for it to filter down everywhere.
Michael Kovnick
AuthorI absolutely agree. The U.S. is getting better. But a part of the problem is the inability to have proper ingredients, partially due to consumer demand, and partially due to regulatory controls. On consumer demand, for example, I walk into a supermarket to purchase a mozzarella. It will be FRESH, made this morning, or at worst, yesterday. They can do this because demand is so high that they know it will fly off the shelves quickly, and there is a demand for a farm-to-market supply chain. In the states, the demand is so much lower, that it is almost impossible to justify the sale of fresh mozzarella. On the regulatory side, a good example is cured meats. If you want Prosciutto in the United States, the only options are locally made, Canadian made, or from Italy, you have the option of Parma or San Daniele. That is because it is flat-out illegal to import from other regions. However, much of the best prosciutto is NOT “sweet” prosciutto like Parma or SD. So if I want to get a really great Umbria prosciutto like one from Norcia, I would have to smuggle it in.