Italy killed my love for eating out, until I discovered a hidden gem - Telegraph

A man with a certain reputation and clearly out to get a reaction.

My posh restaurant days are pretty much behind me but i must admit that the comments on italian bread and use of veg (not salad and wondrous tomatoes) rang kind of true.

Some interesting comments and an author who is unusually active in the comments thread of his own article.

Views?

He needs to travel south, broaden his experience, and carry a bottle of milk of magnesium with him.
Happy New Year :-)
bye bye dicette l'inglese.

he the wrighter of the aticall has oviosly not been to Abruzzo some of the best food ever lash aperderi tuscanna

who is this imbecile. He needs to stay in more...

He has a certain reputation.

Clearly has a long association with italy - maybe his relationship is going through a crisis.

I believe he also wrote a biography of Mussolini which is condsidered seriously dodgy, though it must be said that there are rather a lot of Italians with dodgy views on benito.

It's definitely odd to see a writer come back with so many ill-tempered ripostes in the comment thread to his own article. Maybe he should join a forum

I'm quite surprised to see that a respectable newspaper like The Telegraph considers Farrell, who is clearly losing it day after day, a journalist.

In our village you can buy some very tasty things such as fresh ricotta, truffles, wild mushrooms, newly pressed olive oil and wild pork.

For some reason these quality ingredients are not arriving in the local restaurants I guess because they are too expensive.

Probably Eurospin gets involved somewhere in the process.

Farrell's 'biography' of Mussolini is a disgrace. Try Hibbert's. The Telegraph prefers opinionatd little englanders to journalists, so he would be right at home. To say that Italians cant cook meat or fish is like saying that the Brits cant open a tin.

In answer to this and isshin's question, the telegraph could well be playing the clickbait game - printing/online publishing stuff to get web traffic refferals.

I'd be interested in more of your views on his mussolini biog if you have read it. I haven't.

Brits and tins? I think the days of brits wondering whether to open a tin of carrots (hard to believe but true - at one time it seemed they would tin anything) are in the past. Many brits surely eat a lot of ##### but they can also be far more adventurous than mamy italians i know. I have introduced some italians to some very basic italian stuff they initially turned their noses up at as it had never been used in their family/by their mum. For it proved to be ethnic food from another bit of italy.

Review: Mussolini by Nicholas Farrell | Books | The Guardian
Tobias Jones says it all.

Yes i've read that review modicasa, and a few other non too flattering ones.

Anyone read it?

Anyone read Renzo de Felice's book which is mentioned in that review?

It is I think quite a tome.

No I havent - Ive read Hibberts, Mack Smiths and Bosworths. IMO Mack Smiths is the best, Hibbert is the most readable, and Bosworths has more facts per square inch. I find Italian history books -especially of the more difficult periods of Italian history - to be less than objective in their depiction of history. ....

That article really is the limit! Of course you can eat out badly in Italy, but the chances of that happening in Britain are far greater.
Italian bread no good? Then why do British restaurants go on about "p'neenies", "cheer barter" and "filonee"? To a ridiculous extent, too - it's pathetic when a basic food like bread has to be re-learnt by copying it from foreigners. Even milk has to be called "latte" (pronounced "lartay").
On a visit to Britain the other year my wife ordered a steak, rare. A fantastic piece of meat arrived... burnt to a cinder.
Some Italian restaurants are unimaginative about vegetables, that much is true, but Farrell doesn't know that Italian cuisine is... SIMPLE! Something the pseudo-Italian restaurants in England - and Jamie Oliver - will never learn. A good piece of meat or fish, properly cooked with just a few "odori", doesn't need a sauce. And anyway the British don't know about the right combinations of sauces with food as the French do. They just put together any incongruous combination and you're supposed to be impressed because it's "exotic" or "imaginative".

If I have to judge a country's cuisine I forget about the top restaurant with money no object - that's a cathedral in the desert. To get the real situation I put myself in the shoes of a family of four travelling on a budget, eating out twice a day, wanting something not special but eatable, at a reasonable price. From this point of view Italy still wins hands down, in spite of the rise in prices in recent years.

Interesting post jonwel and i agree wigh much of it but the answer to your question is i think pretty simple. It's good old fashioned marketing/presentation, trying to persuade folk that they are eating somdthing more exotic and interesting (and are therefore more interesting thelmselves) than boring old bread. For of course there is some very good brit (or german) bread. There's nowt too special about many panini whether thrown together in britain or italy. And amongst the many crimes of mussolini and d'annunzio is the abomination of the tramezzino, or at least the ones i have come across. Christened by the priapic one i believe so that good italians wouldn't have to eat that clever invention the sandwich.

I see you are a history buff modicasa, or maybe like me someone looking for italy. On the lack of objectivity you may be interested in John Foot's book Italy's divided memory. It is very good. I have the impression that one of the reasons a fair few Italians rate Mack Smiths book is that they value an escape from the pervasive side-taking of many of their own books. The Bosworth book would I believe be termed "encyclopedic" by one of my old history teachers. I did finish it but it was a struggle and i felt that the picture disappeared under a mass of detail. I also longed for Bosworth to dare to express an opinion. A key question remained unanswered for me - the degree of popular consent.

I can also recommend "Fascist Voices" by Christopher Duggan.