Covid-19 in Italy: the Revival of Culinary Traditions
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COVID-19 IN ITALY: THE REVIVAL OF CULINARY TRADITIONS Ivy Lee TC 660H/TC 359T Plan II Honors Program The University of Texas at Austin May 13, 2020 ____________________________________ Dr. Robyn Metcalfe School of Human Ecology Supervisor ____________________________________ Dr. Marvin Bendele School of American Studies Second Reader 1 ABSTRACT Author: Ivy Lee Title: COVID-19 in Italy: The Revival of Culinary Traditions Supervising Professors: Dr. Robyn Metcalfe and Dr. Marvin Bendele This thesis explores the effects that COVID-19 has on Italian food traditions. Before the outbreak of the deadly virus, Italian cuisine was becoming a shadow of what it used to be. The increase in tourism and popularity of travel websites made it almost impossible for local businesses and small restaurants to stay open. As a result, regional cooking and traditional healthy food habits were no longer the pillars of Italian cuisine. The needs of the tourists began to outweigh the needs of the locals and authentic Italian cuisine was increasingly harder to encounter. The economic prosperity generated by the hospitality industry overshadowed what attracts tourists to the country in the first place. However, COVID-19 changed the fate of the Italian food landscape. The nation-wide quarantine created an opportunity for re-entry into some of those food traditions that were quickly being lost. Even among the mess, there is a silver lining. Throughout the course of my research, I had to start over twice due to some major road- blocks. In the short time I had to write my thesis, it was hard to build a defense. I advise further research in the topic of discussion. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 3 Preface to Original Thesis 4 Introduction 7 The Italian Case 11 Chapter 1: Food and Family in Italy 17 Chapter 2: A return to cooking 23 Chapter 3: A return to local ingredients 27 Chapter 4: A return to authenticity 29 Conclusion 31 3 Acknowledgements Foremost, my deep gratitude goes to my advisor Professor Robyn Metcalfe for the continuous support of my research. Her enthusiasm, motivation, immense knowledge, and creativity helped me in all the time of writing my thesis. She helped me trust my voice and encouraged me from start to finish. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to my second reader Professor Marvin Bendele for his insightful comments and encouragement. Completing my thesis was not a smooth process. Coronavirus impeded my access to my research, my computer broke, and most of my research was deleted. Yet, my advisors were always on call to help and offer solutions to each roadblock. I could not have written my thesis without the incredible and unwavering support and patience of my advisors. Even though most of it was lost and erased, writing my thesis over Italy helped me process a lot of grief and commemorate some of my favorite memories with my little brother. It is because of him that I decided to write about Italy and why I feel such a strong love for the country. I am eternally grateful for the creativity I was allowed in writing my thesis. 4 Preface to Original Thesis My desire to write about tourism in Italy hinges on my own life experience of being both a tourist and a resident in Italy. Born in New York City and raised in multiple cities around the world, I grew up in an environment vastly different from my peers. Six months after my birth, my parents decided to move to London. After facing the rain and gloom that London often ensures for one year, my mother decided it was time to move, again. They decided that Paris, Florence, and Madrid were all viable options and wrote those cities down on small pieces of paper, put them in a hat, and blindly picked Florence. The plan was to live in Florence for a year, then move back so that my brother and I could start preschool in London. None of us spoke any Italian or had any friends in Florence, yet, we immediately became mesmerized by the Italian lifestyle and one year stretched into seven years. My parents enrolled me in an Italian Catholic school and I quickly became fluent in Italian. We all fell in love with all things Italian, especially the great food. After seven years, my parents decided to leave Italy and move to Miami. After Miami we moved to Fort Worth, then New York, and then Dallas. Even though we moved away, Italy continues to remain in my life. I spent most summers in Tuscany, most of my spring breaks in the Dolomites, and attended a sailing camp on the Island of Elba each year until I turned 18. My little brother was born in Italy and he died in Italy in the summer of 2019. Even though I have no Italian heritage, Italy will forever be a part of my life and a home away from home. When I think about my love for Italy, I think about the food. Food has always been important to my family. When my grandmother turned 18 and graduated high school she embarked on a journey to France. In the 1930s, it was extremely abnormal for a young woman to 5 travel alone and was discouraged by everyone around her, yet she had an intrinsic desire for an adventure that no one could talk her out of. My grandmother, Peg, bought a one-way ticket to Paris and left Minnesota with only a backpack. With no plan, she bought a bike and decided to see where the wind would take her. Over the course of a year, she made several friends who hosted her in their homes and entrenched herself in the French way of life. In France, she learned the joys of French cooking and the importance of quality ingredients. After a year on her bike, she moved back to Minnesota and eventually met and married my grandfather. I am lucky enough to have inherited her daring and wanting a sense of adventure. In the 1970s, my grandmother starred in her own cooking show. The show focused on the french cuisine she was used to cooking, often featuring recipes such as roasted chicken with creamy morel sauce. European food was a staple for my father and his siblings growing up. Later in her career, my grandmother was appointed as head of the cooking school for Central Market in Houston. There, she led cooking workshops, monitored the quality of produce entering the stores, and introduced new products to the Central Market inventory. My grandmother encouraged the exploration of different cuisines and instilled a love for food in my father and the entire family. Today, my family and I share that same love for food as my grandmother did. We base or travel around the exploration of cuisines and plan our travel routes according to where the great restaurants are located. In all our years of traveling, we almost always end up in the same place, Italy. Italian’s love their cuisine as much as their families, probably because most family time is shared over a bowl of spaghetti. Food is at the center of Italian culture, it is a symbol of their national identity. 6 I greatly cherish Italian food because of my history with the country and I don't want to see it changing. However, with the commoditization of tourism and rapid globalization, those Italian traditions that are so sacred and dear to my heart are rapidly changing. When I visited Florence this past summer, I went to the vegetable shop only to find it closed down. The butcher shop was struggling to stay open, and Camillos had become a tourist trap unrecognizable from its original glory. Even the menus had changed. They now have a gluten-free menu and have even gone so far as adding spaghetti con alfredo (blasphemy!). Everything that I used to associate with Italian cuisine had changed in the blink of an eye. Even though change is inevitable, it is important to keep the Italian food traditions alive. Food connects all classes of Italian society, from the most wealthy to the most impoverished. It brings families together as well as the entire nation. As a result, I have found myself thinking about the impacts of tourism and globalization on Italian culture and the future of the Italian landscape. I was visiting my family in Miami, Florida when COVID-19 began to seriously affect the United States. Still in recovery from a recent heart surgery, I was advised against travelling back to Austin, as I am a high risk individual. As a result, I no longer had access to my research materials in Austin. As detailed by my previous introduction, I was planning on writing my thesis over Italy’s changing food traditions in response to tourism. However, low and behold in the middle of my research, Italy now faces a new set of problems as the Pandemic’s epicenter. 7 Introduction Hospitality and tourism are how the Italian economy survives. Films such as La Dolce Vita and books like Under the Tuscan Sun, by Fraces Mayer, were successful abroad, and their depiction of the country's perceivably idyllic life helped raise Italy's international profile 1. They both demonstrate how food and Italian Identity were indistinguishable linked and spawned a major boom in tourism to Italy. As a result of the new wave of visitors, tourism became one of the main industries in Italy. In the times before Corona, tourism represented roughly 15 percent of the Italian Gross Domestic Product 2. Hospitality means being hospitable.