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Home , Lombardy, Northern Italy, Tourism in Italy, Veneto

COVID-19 IN : THE REVIVAL OF CULINARY TRADITIONS

Ivy Lee

TC 660H/TC 359T

Plan II Honors Program

The 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, was becoming a shadow of what it used to be. The increase in 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 -wide 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.

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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

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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.

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Preface to Original Thesis

My desire to write about 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 . 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 in , most of my spring breaks in the , 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 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 . 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 , it is a symbol of their national identity. 6

I greatly cherish Italian food because of my with the country and I '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 ’s epicenter.

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Introduction

Hospitality and tourism are how the Italian 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 before Corona, tourism represented roughly 15 percent of the Italian 2.

Hospitality means being hospitable. Therefore, , restaurants, and markets need to adapt to the needs of the tourists in order to stay afloat. In the restaurant industry, this means altering menus and changing dishes in ways that coincide with those that the tourists are seeking.

To please the tourists, Italian restaurants began adding more cream to their pastas and the prices started to skyrocket. From what I saw, restaurants throughout Italy, specifically in the city of

Florence, have seen a complete change in response to the tourism boom.

My favorite restaurant began charging 20 euros for a bowl of pasta with tomato sauce.

Seven years ago it cost 10. Not only did the prices rise but restaurants started to skimp on the quality of ingredients they were using. To save money, restaurants often resorted to the cheaper option, as there is a slim chance the tourist will notice if they aren't very well educated on Italian cuisine.

1 Helstosky, C. (2004). and Oil. New York, NY: Berg. ​ 2 Fortis, Marco. The Pillars of the Italian Economy , Food & Wine, Tourism / ​ Edited by Marco Fortis. 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016. Web. 8

Tourists from all over the world were travelling to and changing the atmosphere of the city. What was once a charming local Italian summer spot is now a tourist hotspot. In response to the new wave of tourists, restaurants started catering to their very specific needs and the menus started changing. Prices began to rise and soon enough, the mom and pop run businesses began to close down. The gelato shop that hosted pictures of my brothers and I from our childhood was forced to close. The couple and daughter that used to work at the shop now work at , an Italian supermarket chain. Last year, I found out my favorite restaurant in Forte dei Marmi had closed when they were no longer able to compete with the restaurants in the town center. That is when retaining the authenticity of Italian cuisine became a cause I was willing to get behind.

Pleasing the tourist became the driving force to economic prosperity in Forte dei Marmi and throughout Italy. The Italian culinary traditions that I believe need no change, were changing for the worse. Traditions were being lost and delicious food became harder to come by.

In response to the downturn of authentic cuisine, I began having to hide my favorite restaurants from my friends. When someone I know travels to Italy, they usually contact me for my recommendations. When they ask, I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have two options: 1) tell them the names of my favorite restaurants or 2) give them the names of the restaurants that cater to the tourists. I usually land on option two. The dilemma is that if I give them the names of my actual favorite restaurants, my friends will tell their friends and eventually, the once authentic establishment will be inevitably changed. On the other hand, if I give them the names of the tourist hot spots, then the restaurants I love so much won't be able to compete against the high grossing tourist spots, and will eventually have to close down. 9

Authenticity was being traded for money. Without tourism, Italy would lose a great amount of economic prowess and be stuck in an antiquated way of life. While change is inevitable and without change there would be no progress, I hated the way in which things were ​ ​ changing. The attraction of economic prosperity began to shadow what attracted tourists to Italy in the first place. I didn't want what was happening in to happen to the rest of Italy. There had to be a way to preserve Italian culinary traditions.

Venice used to be the trade empire of Italy. When I was a child, I was so mesmerized by the winding and beautiful architecture of the city. I recently revisited Venice and was appalled by what it had become. Cruise ships dumped off thousands of disoriented tourists holding selfie sticks, who headed to the restaurants in the to cash out their travel coupons. Since cruise ships create a sense of placelessness, these visitors were often so disoriented by their surroundings that they treat historic cities as amusement parks, often acting with little consideration for the locals and the traditions of the city itself.

How can I make this ctop? What can be done to prevent Italy from becoming a

Disneyland version of itself? How can Italian food traditions continue without getting caught up in global trends. The last thing I wanted to start seeing in restaurants was “spaghetti al avocado”.

Authenticity used to be preserved by passing down recipes and traditions from the older generation to the younger generation, as Italian teenagers lived at home after graduating high school. However, more and more Italian children are leaving the house at a younger age and are no longer absorbing those traditions from their parents or grandparents. As a result they are being forgotten and lost. Instead, those young adults are leaving the house and absorbing the changing environment around them and shifting their ideas of italian authenticity. 10

Low and behold in the middle of my thesis, Corona happened and Italy is the pandemic hotspot. Now, tourism and travelling isn't even an option. Tourism is no longer the driving force of the Italian economy, because it can't be. Borders are closed, schools are cancelled, and millions of are forced to lock themselves inside their homes for the foreseeable future.

Corona has caused a terrible destruction of the economy, shut down thousands of businesses, and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

As the virus progresses in its spread, we all face unnerving unknowns: when the virus will peak, how long we will have to remain in isolation, how many people will die, and how the stock market will ever recover. One thing we do know is that, eventually, the world will land back on its feet. Someday we will resume our usual everyday life, but it is foolish to say the virus will not bear lingering effects for generations to come. In Italy’s case, there may be many.

Worries about tourism and the destruction of Italian traditions are now replaced with concerns over health, food safety, and the survival of a country with an already weak economy.

A culture that is based on human interaction is suddenly forced to isolate from each other. A culture that prides itself on its cuisine and dining can no longer keep its restaurants open. A society in which family is revered is having to face the loss of thousands of parents and grandparents. It is devastating to see a country that I love so dearly undergo such an impactful and profound transformation.

The Italian experience reveals how a country cannot effectively combat a pandemic without a cohesive and actionable plan shared across all areas. The pandemic highlights the structural issues with the decentralized Italian Health care system and regionalized governance.

Proper planning, communication, and coordination is needed to deal with a health crisis like 11

Corona. It also brings to light the issue of racism in the country and could result in a political win for Italy’s ultra-right party. While each of these long term effects are crucial to analyze, they are lengthy and deserve a thesis of their own. What I am concerned about is still the ideas of maintaining Italian food traditions.

While there is much devastation, there is also a glimmer of hope: the virus presents a new outcome for the future of Italian food. In what follows, I will weigh my old thesis topic with the dramatic cultural changes caused by COVID-19 and in doing so, will conclude that Italy could see a return to healthy traditional cooking and a renewed interest in the local ingredients that make the country so extraordinary. Since there are few peer reviewed sources available, I will be relying on my knowledge of Italy and information available online.

The Italian Case

At the end of 2019, a virus began in Wuhan, and later spread to over 100 countries

3. The Health Commision of Wuhan informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about a cluster of acute pneumonia cases with an unknown origin in its province. Early hypotheses thought the virus may be linked to a seafood market in China but the individual with the first reported case of Corona had no link to the market4. On January 9th, 2020, the Chinese Center for

Disease Control and Prevention identified the virus as coronavirus, classified as COVID-19. On

March 9th, 2020, the WHO officially declared COVID-19 as an ongoing global pandemic. 5

3 Mahase, E. (2020, March 12). Covid-19: WHO declares pandemic because of ​ "alarming levels" of spread, severity, and inaction. Retrieved from thebmj database. (Accession No. 368:m1036 4 Sauer, L. M. (n.d.). What Is Coronavirus? Retrieved April 10, 2020, from https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus 5 Nicastri, E., Petrosillo, N., Ascoli Bartoli, T., Lepore, L., Mondi, A., Palmieri, F., D’Offizi, G., Marchioni, L., Murachelli, S., Ippolito, G., & Antinori, A. (2020). National Institute for the 12

At the very beginning of the spread, few people saw the virus as a legitimate threat. The

Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that he was “deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction 6.” Yet, people continued to ignore his warnings until the spread became uncontrollable.

As of May 5th, 2020, Italy has had a total of 213,013 confirmed cases and 29,315 deaths

7. Since there are limited resources and a finite number of tests performed, the real number of infected people is estimated to be higher than the official count. Italy has the highest number of confirmed deaths in all of and second in the world, lagging behind the 8.

Even though Italy is not the only country that has been tragically overwhelmed by the virus, it has the highest death rate, accountable for 19% of all deaths worldwide 9. Given that the virus has spread to over 100 countries and the country’s relatively small size, that percentage point is shocking. As depicted by the graph below, the rate of infection has slown, but the number of cases continues to rise.

Infectious Diseases “L. Spallanzani” IRCCS. Recommendations for COVID-19 Clinical Management. Infectious Disease Reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.4081/idr.2020.8543 ​ ​ ​ ​ 6 Mahase, E. (2020, March 12). Covid-19: WHO declares pandemic because of "alarming levels" of spread, severity, and inaction. Retrieved from thebmj database. (Accession No. 368:m1036 7 Covid-19 - Situazione in Italia [Covid-19 - Situation in Italy]. (2020, April 10). Retrieved April 10, 2020, from http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/ nuovocoronavirus/ dettaglioContenutiNuovoCoronavirus.jsp?lingua=italiano&id=5351&area=nuovoCoronavi rus&menu=vuoto 8 COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2020, from ​ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ 9 COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2020, from ​ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ 13

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COVID-19 was first confirmed to have spread to Italy on January 31st 2020, when two

Chinese tourists tested positive for COVID-19 after staying at a in the central part of

11. The italian government declared a state of emergency and suspended all flights to and from

China 12. The two visitors flew from Wuhan on January 23rd and landed in the Malpensa airport. They rented a car and drove down to Rome. Therefore, it comes to no surprise that the Virus started its spread with two clusters in ; one in the and one in the Region 13.

10 Italy Coronavirus. (2020, April 10). Retrieved April 10, 2020, from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/ 11 Two coronavirus cases found in Italy. (2020, January 31). Retrieved from https://www.ansa.it/english/news/general_news/2020/01/31/ two-coronavirus-cases-found-in-italy_981d57c5-67b9-4043-95d5-f6bd47e389df.html 12 Ananasso, A., Stabili, E., Gagliardi, G., & Matteucci, P. (2020, February 29). ​ Coronavirus in Italia: tutte le notizie di febbraio [Coronavirus in Italy: all of the news of february]. Retrieved April 3, 2020, from https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2020/02/22/news/ coronavirus_in_italia_aggiornamento_ora_per_ora-249241616/ 13 Paterlini, Marta. “On the Front Lines of Coronavirus: The Italian Response to Covid-19.” BMJ ​ 368 (2020): m1065. Web. 14

On February 21st, the first Italian man was hospitalized and confirmed as the first case of

COVID-19 in Italy. 14 Regional authorities retraced the movements of the 38 year old man and found the two clusters of people also testing positive. Eleven municipalities in northern Italy were identified as the centers of the two main Italian clusters and were placed under quarantine; the majority of positive cases in other can be traced back to one of the two clusters. On the 22nd of February, the number of cases grew to 60 and the first death was reported.15 Within a week, the number of cases increased beyond expectations and spread to bordering regions in

Northern Italy. By the beginning of March, the virus had spread all over Italy, faster than any of its neighboring countries. Despite now having some of the toughest measures in the world,

Italian authorities fumbled on many of the early steps, when it most mattered, in the early stages of contagion.

14 Severgnini, C. (2020, January 31). Coronavirus, primi due casi in Italia [Coronavirus, first two cases in Italy]. Retrieved from https://www.corriere.it/cronache/20_gennaio_30/ coronavirus-italia-corona-9d6dc436-4343-11ea-bdc8-faf1f56f19b7.shtml?refresh_ce-c p 15 Carinci, F. (2020, February 28). Editorials Covid-19: preparedness, decentralisation, and the hunt for patient zero. Retrieved from thebmj database. (Accession No. 368) 15

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Italy’s attempts to cut off the virus always lagged behind the virus’s rapid trajectory. On

February 23rd, two days after the first Italian tested positive for COVID-19d, the government sealed off 11 towns in Northern Italy with military and police checkpoints17. The Lombardy region closed its schools, and movie theaters. Along with those measures, they

16 Situation update worldwide, as of 10 April 2020. (2020, April 10). Retrieved April 10, 2020, from https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/ geographical-distribution-2019-ncov-cases 17 Horowitz, J., & Povoledo, E. (2020, February 23). Europe Confronts Coronavirus as Italy Battles an Eruption of Cases. Retrieved April 10, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/world/europe/ italy-coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=3 16 implemented more aggressive testing. Testing was extended to even asymptomatic people; other countries mostly only tested patients if they were showing symptoms or had been exposed to the virus 18. Just in one day of increased testing, the number of reported cases doubled and the first death was reported. The firm action on the side of the government and realization of the severity of the virus caused a mass hysteria and thousands of Itlaians made a run to the supermarket19.

Photos and videos went viral all over social media of empty supermarket shelves and frenzied shoppers. One of the first viral videos of the Italian Corona crisis was posted by a man to twitter with the caption, “This is a supermarket in Milan. Sunday, February 23rd, 7:30pm.

Hard to explain,” of a completely empty supermarket run dry of their merchandise20. Within hours of the announcement on the northern lockdown, grocery store shelves were completely cleared. City streets were completely empty. People were locking themselves in their homes, fearful that if they step outside they will contract the virus. All non-essential businesses closed down. For two months, Italians were locked inside their homes with no notion of when they would be able to step out again.

No one prepared for the devastating effects of Coronavirus. It has crumbled the world economy, brought unemployment rates to the highest levels it has ever been, infected millions of people, killed thousands, and instilled a fear so great that no one will leave their homes. The

18 Paterlini, Marta. “On the Front Lines of Coronavirus: The Italian Response to Covid-19.” BMJ ​ ​ 368 (2020): m1065. Web. 19 Horowitz, J., Bubola, E., & Povoledo, E. (2020, March 21). Italy, Pandemic's New ​ Epicenter, Has Lessons for the World. Retrieved April 6, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/world/europe/ italy-coronavirus-center-lessons.html 20 Vidovich, L. D. (2020, March 23). This is a supermarket in Milan. Sunday, ​ February 23rd, 7:30pm. Hard to explain [Photograph]. Retrieved from ​ ​ https://twitter.com/ldv_ldv/status/1231651102296363009 17 videos I have received from friends show the empty streets of Milan and Florence, ghosts of what they usually look like. Restaurants and bars are bordered up and the beaches are closed.

Chapter 1: Food and Family in Italy

Most countries in the world have experienced a significant cultural shift in response to

COVID-19. Italy is not unique in this matter. What separates Italy from the rest of the world is my personal relationship with the country. I lived in Florence for seven years and have returned every year since. It is the single most consistent place in my life. Italy is where I first learned to read and write, where I made my first friends, and where I gained and lost a brother. As it pertains to my thesis, Italy has taught me everything I know about food and some of my most cherished memories involve eating in Italy with my family.

One summer a couple of years back, we found ourselves driving through Parma looking for a small trattoria recommended to my father by one of his Italian friends. We were making our way down a small country road when a big truck came barreling towards us. If we were in the

United States-- where two lane roads actually accommodate two cars--we would have been safe, but since we were in Italy, we had no choice but to veer off the side of a road in order to allow the truck to pass us. Instead of safely veering off the side of the road, our tiny Fiat rolled into a ditch and we landed sideways. I have attached a photo below as proof. 18

Luckily, no one was harmed and a tow truck arrived to hoist our car out of the ditch. The five of us piled into the tow truck expecting him to deliver us to a mechanic but that was not what my father had in mind. Even though we just had a near death experience and our car was incredibly damaged, his mind was still set on lunch. It was one o’clock and the restaurant kitchen closed at two. Panicked that we wouldn't make it in time, he informed the tow truck driver of his predicament. The driver immediately understood my father's concerns: instead of taking us to the mechanic, he dropped us off at the restaurant and told us he would be back to pick us up and take us to our car around 3. Even though I like to poke fun at my father for this story, I am incredibly grateful for his sense of adventure and love for food. Without it, I would not have had the pleasure of enjoying one of the best meals of my life. We ate treys of parma ham, parmigiano reggiano, steak marinated in balsamic vinegar, and pumpkin soaked in butter.

The next year my father, brother and I were driving back to Forte Dei Marmi from Finale

Ligure, a beach town three hours to the north of Forte. In a desperate act to eat authentic Italian food, we took a two hour detour to Parma in order to dine at that same restaurant as the year before. The entire car ride we spoke of what we would order, drooling over the meal that we had 19 yet to consume. However, once we arrived, the restaurant was abandoned and in its place was a deserted building. We asked my father's friend who had originally recommended the restaurant, and in a dismal tone, he informed us that the restaurant had closed down, as it was unable to keep its doors open against the competition of the other guidebook recommended restaurants. Bitter and heartbroken, we piled back into our car and continued to drive through Parma. To our luck, we stumbled across a small family run truffle farm with a small restaurant attached. The following is what we ate:

Risotto covered in the parmesan, , and truffles of the region. Prosciutto accompanied with fried bread. Ravioli drenched in butter and cheese. Pork with actual flavor.

Along with the flavor, the best part was the price: the layered with the finest ingredients cost 14 euros. The pork cost 10. Everything was grown or raised in the region, making the prices affordable to the masses. Everything was simple, local, and delicious.

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I detail some of my culinary experiences in Italy because they exemplify how important food is to me and my family. When we are not eating and living in Italy, we are cooking and eating Italian food at home. Three out of four meals at home are Italian. My father calls Pasta

Pomodoro (Pasta with tomato sauce), “chicken soup.” Like many Italians, he values family dinner as the most important time of the day. Growing up, my mother and father would cook us dinner seven nights a week. I never had to resort to a peanut butter jelly sandwich and not once did I see a take out box.

Even when we are not eating and cooking, we are talking about food. Planning Christmas dinner has turned into a two month ordeal where my father’s, grandmother’s, and thirty year old cousin’s opinions all go against one another. My father represents the Italian opinion, my grandmother the French, and my cousin the “millennial equally fluent in Italian, French, and

Asian cuisines and wants something out of the box” opinion. After each meal, we usually 21 critique each dish on how it could be improved. Our opinions are harsh. Every night is like a new episode of Chopped. ​ ​ Whether we are at our beach club in Forte dei Marmi, sitting around the table jittery for them to bring out the panzanelle é (fried bread with a creamy spreadable cheese), or eating pasta bolognese with my brothers at camp, food is the center of most of our interactions and central to our communication. It is the one passion we all share in common and the glue that keeps our bond so tight.

The value of family is something we gained with our time in Italy. Family is the most important aspect of an Italian’s life. I know this from my own experience which can be supported by Paul Ginsborg, an Italian demographer, who characterizes family as the anchor of ​ italian society 21. Family provides economic and emotional support to the individual and is often ​ the basis of their social circles. Even through adulthood, Italians often live with their parents.

However, one cannot discuss the Italian family without mentioning food.

Italians turn to food as a way to think about, and through, the issues of social change, economic transformation, and political crisis. Food habits, like the standard of living or the gross domestic product, have come to symbolize Italy's political status, economic health, and aspirations for the future. Food for Italians is a way of life. Italians live to eat, and the ​ ​ importance of food in family life is absolutely paramount and ingrained in everyday routines.

Family members gather together for meals and share news on their daily life. Yet, in recent years this tradition of family meal time has become less and less common.

21 Ginsborg, Paul. Italy and Its Discontents : Family, Civil Society, State, 1980-2001 / Paul ​ Ginsborg. London ; New York, N.Y: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 2001. Print. ​ 22

An article in the Wall Street Journal argues that this change is due to the economic downturn of 2008, which “started a sort of involuntary revolution in the Italian labor market, a shift that changed the family dynamics” 22. With more women joining the workforce and teenagers leaving the house earlier to work or attend school, there was not enough time in the day to devote hours to cooking and eating a meal. As a result, families were turning to fast food restaurants or other quick and convenient modes of filling their stomachs. With the greater economic pressure, family time and therefore meal time was starting to disappear. This gradual change can be proven by the efforts of the Slow Food Movement, an organization that helps to preserve the traditional Italian food heritage.

Culturally, the slow food movement seeks to defend and preserve a certain way of life that was disappearing, a way of life that is readily measured by the food habits 23. It emphasizes a nostalgia for food as that which builds conviviality and requires thought and time for preparation. The nostalgia is for having the time to eat a sunday family dinner or the time to go around to several markets instead of doing all of one's shopping at a single supermarket. The nostalgia is in response to the recent changes in Italian society, particularly those involving the family, which prioritize a certain level of comfort for fewer members. However, the pervasive spread of COVID-19 throughout Italy has helped mitigate and slow down those changes.

22 Giada Zampano. “World News: Italy ‘Mancession’ Sends More Women Into the Workplace.” Wall Street Journal 2 Nov. 2013. Web. ​ 23 Parkins, Wendy. "Slow Food Movement." Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture, edited by Dale ​ ​ Southerton, vol. 3: Packaging-Zoos and wildlife parks, Index, SAGE Reference, 2011, pp. 1291-1293. Gale eBooks, ​ ​ https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/apps/doc/CX4191900481/GVRL?u=txshracd2598& sid=GVRL&xid=7be85b2a. Accessed 7 Apr. 2020. 23

Chapter 2: A return to cooking

Ever since ordered the lockdown of the entire nation, families have been stuck in quarantine together for almost two months, communicating to the outside world only through facetime and phone calls. Since most young adults live at home ​ with their parents throughout university and often until marriage, the older and younger generations are spending more time together than they ever have in the past. Since friends are separated from each other for months, relationships between family members have replaced some of those friendships. For Italian families, this return to family time means the revival of the traditional Italian meal.

Forced to stay at home, meals have become one of the few ways of maintaining some sense of sanity while in quarantine. Meals give the day structure and preparing them is a fun and satisfying activity that the entire family can partake in. Meals have always been an important tradition in Italian culture, but also one that was in decline in recent years. The quarantine has helped restore that tradition.

In the absence of restaurants, Italians are starting to become cooks again24. “Forced to ​ stay inside, what could be more beautiful than gathering around the table?” wrote La Nazione, an ​ Italian magazine25. With the absence of school and work, grandparents, parents and their children ​ are able to collectively sit and enjoy a delicious home cooked meal over conversation and wine.

24 Firpo, E. (2020, March 26). Italy's Inspiring Response to Corona. Retrieved May 5, 2020, from http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/ 20200325-italys-inspiring-response-to-the-coronavirus 25 Ceccatelli, P. (2020, March 12). La cucina ai tempi del coronavirus: tutti in casa ai fornelli. Retrieved from https://www.lanazione.it/cronaca/ coronavirus-passatempo-1.5065437 24

There is more time than ever and Italians are using it to rediscover age-old family recipes. With ​ the quarantine, Italians have rediscovered traditional family recipies and regional cooking26.

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Not only is the older Italian generation sharing recipes with their own families, they have also used this time in quarantine to showcase their creative abilities to the rest of the world.

In an interesting turn of events, Italian mothers and grandmothers are becoming the new social media influencers. One creative Nonna, italian for grandmother, started a virtual cooking class to help people learn how to cook classic italian dishes. The 84 year old woman from Rome live streams a class once a week from her home in Rome 28. Thanks to the resilience and creativity of

26 Firpo, E. (2020, March 26). Italy's Inspiring Response to Corona. Retrieved May ​ 5, 2020, from http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/ 20200325-italys-inspiring-response-to-the-coronavirus 27EBIT 28 Taylor, E. (2020, March 24). Learn the art of pasta-making with an Italian Grandma virtually teaches you from her home just outside of Rome. Retrieved April 5, 2020, from https://www.insider.com/ virtual-pasta-making-class-with-an-italian-grandma-during-coronavirus-2020-3 25

Italians stuck in quarantine, viewers from all over the world are learning how to cook classic

Italian dishes.

Owing to the Coronavirus, the culinary traditions that I value so much are facing a potential revival. The quarantine has brought back the family traditions that had previously fallen to the wayside. Even though there are no peer reviewed sources to back my argument of the return to traditional cooking, this idea is clearly present all over social media.

Chiara Ferragni, an Italian Influencer with over thirteen million followers, often features tutorials for her followers on show to recreate her favorite Italian dishes. Instead of being sponsored by fashion brands, food companies are the new money makers of the Instagram community. As shown in the photo below, Italian brands such as Barilla pasta, sponsor her to promote their products.

In addition, to raise awareness of the Italian situation Chiara often posts photos promoting the simple pleasures of being home with the family. She reminisces on her childhood 26 and the food and family that she holds closest to her heart. She shares videos of her father in law cooking dinner each night and in doing so, has made him an instagram star on his own account.

He now has over 150,000 followers on instagram and shares photos daily of his at-home cooking. Through her series of posts and her family members’ posts, she effectively promotes food and meal time as being a core Italian value. She shows the world what it means to be Italian and encourages other Italians to share their own quarantine meals.

This promotion of a key aspect of Italian culture may provide a lasting re-entry into the

Italian tradition of cooking. The older generations are teaching the younger generations the recipies and the value of quality ingredients, aspects that were being forgotten. COVID-19 has encouraged Italians to go back to adopting traditional food habits and likewise, has promoted local food producers and local markets alike.

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Chapter 3: A return to local ingredients

Before air travel became commoditized and mankind was more connected to their land, food was a major local identity. Man-made food from the ingredients naturally occurring from the land around them. New food may have been introduced and new food traditions developed around them, but in general each region of the world had a unique food identity like that of a language 29. This idea of regional cooking was especially enforced in Italy by the government.

When Mussolini and the fascist party seized power in 1922, he set out to control every aspect of food consumption and nationalize italian cuisine 30. The fascist regime proclaimed the economic and nutritional benefits of the Italian cuisine and discouraged imported foods. As a result, Italian food became a core feature of Italian National Pride. When the fascist regime collapsed, the interest in regional traditions endured as well as a concentrated defense of Italian food outside influence. However, Italians could not defend themselves against the culinary effects of mass tourism and globalization.

Fast food and genetically modified foods threatened to replace Italy's diverse regional tastes with food-as-a-standardized products. Ethnic restaurants are now commonplace in Italian ​ ​ cities and an estimated 600,000 Italians were eating at Mcdonalds each day31. The problem is not the change to these unique food , but the speed at which it is occurring. In some cases, over as little as one generation there was an almost genocidal destruction of a culture's unique

29 Parisi Presicce, Claudio, and Orietta Rossini. Nutrire l’impero : storie di alimentazione da ​ ​ Roma e / a cura di Claudio Parisi Presicce, Orietta Rossini. Roma (Italy): “L’Erma” di ​ Bretschneider, 2015. Print. 30 Helstosky, C. (2004). Garlic and Oil. New York, NY: Berg. ​ 31 Petrini, C., & Watson, B. (Eds.). (2001). Slow Food: Collected Thoughts on ​ Taste, Tradition, and the Honest Pleasures of Food. White Junction, ​ ​ VT: Chelsea Green. 28 food heritage. The commission of the recorded that 1,500 of the

7,000 varieties of fruit in Italy will disappear over the next four to five years 32. True to their statement, twelve years later Italy registered only 1500 fruit varieties33.

Food culture is extremely fluid and always changing and much of Italy’s culinary past is invented or re-invented. Food culture will always change but without the opportunity to record and observe these changes over multiple generations and across decades, we risk losing vital parts of who we are as individuals, as unique cultures, and as a human species. Food culture contains a great deal of society’s knowledge. As people stop eating the foods of their ancestors, they stop growing it, they stop buying it, and the market for it dries up.

My worry is that if we lose the stories and traditions that make up our unique societies, we create a more bland world and eliminate the insights that come from different ways of thinking and understanding the world. Diversity is what has helped mankind survive and thrive on this planet. Corona offers an opportunity to stop that rapid change from occurring.

Italians are eating at home all the time, as there are no restaurants, no McDonalds or other fast food outlets. Since people are returning to cooking with regional ingredients they are also starting to buy from local food producers instead of supermarkets. In Italian cooking, flavor rarely comes from a spice or seasoning, it comes from the ingredients in the dish. In order to get the best ingredients, people buy local products, as the highest quality ingredients come from the country’s own land.

32 Petrini, C., & Watson, B. (Eds.). (2001). Slow Food: Collected Thoughts on ​ ​ Taste, Tradition, and the Honest Pleasures of Food. White River Junction, ​ ​ VT: Chelsea Green. 33 Elia, A., & Santamaria, P. (2013, March 15). Biodiversity in Vegetable Crops, a Heritage to Save: The Case of Puglia Region. Retrieved April 7, 2020, from https://agronomy.it/index.php/agro/article/view/ija.2013.e4/647 29

There is little to no evidence online to support that argument but, I contacted Dr. Maria

Grazia Quieti, an Italian food studies professor at the American University of Rome and she wrote back saying that “the local farmers' markets and the Solidarity Purchasing Groups have had greater sales. Local markets in the quartieri have also organized home delivery (which they did not do before COVID-19).” Corona has forced local markets to keep up with society’s needs and has given them a leg up to their supermarket competitors with at home deliveries. If I had more time, I would include data that shows the shift away from local markets to big supermarket chains before the virus spread to Italy. Since the goal of my initial thesis was to protect what food means to producers and consumers alike, Corona offers a solution to the issue.

If local markets can continue to expand their businesses past the life-time of Corona,

Italy could see the decline of big supermarket chains and a return to the charming mom and pop businesses that made Italy unique and attractive to begin with. By buying food from local vegetable and fruit markets, Italians are encouraging the farming of foods that are naturally occuring on the land and have evidently created a re-entry into regional cooking.

Chapter 4: A return to authenticity

COVID-19 has the potential of closing down one sixth of Italy’s restaurants and bars34.

For a country in which socialization is key to their culture, there could not be a more bleak outcome. Restaurants and bars are where social interactions take place. They bring a community of people together and unify them over a love for food and drink. Since tourism no longer wields

34 Legorano, G., & Hinshaw, D. (2020, April 19). Europe Slowly Emerges From Coronavirus Lockdown. Retrieved May 4, 2020, from https://www.wsj.com/ articles/europe-slowly-emerges-from-coronavirus-lockdown-11587288602 30 its power on the Italian economy and restaurant business, when restaurants reopen, they must find another way to keep their doors open and their kitchens running. Instead of trying to please the tourists, they are going to have to fight for the attention of the locals.

Before Corona, restaurants in Italy were successful because they were either popular amongst tourists (usually featured on popular travel websites and books), they were very popular among locals, or they garnered the attention of foodies for their elevated level of cooking.

However, this has all changed. As long as Italy's borders remain closed and travel remains null,

Italy will have to look to the country’s residents for economic prosperity. In order to please the locals, restaurant chefs must prepare incredibly flavorful foods and present them with quality cooking. As a result, Italy could see a revival of authenticity in relation to its restaurant industry.

Take the city of as an example. Bologna is the culinary of Italy and is home to some of the best restaurants in Italy and the world. Many of the foods that people think of as quintessentially Italian come from the Romana region, where Bologna is located.

In 2017 I was lucky enough to visit Bologna and receive a tour from the President of the

Gelato University (Why did I go to the University of Texas when I could have earned a degree in

Gelato?). On our tour he boasted about Bologna’s food and how Bolognese food was the best

Italian food in all of Italy as it prided itself on upholding traditional recipes with regional ingredients. He claimed that Bologna was home to the best food because the restaurants there were tailored toward the palettes of the locals, not the tourists. While his statement might have been due to a great amount of bias, I could not object to his statement after eating some of the tastiest food I had ever encountered in Italy. 31

While visiting Bologna, I was lucky enough to eat at a members only restaurant. The restaurant consisted of ten tables and a very competitive eat-in policy, you had to be a local and you had to appreciate good food. I will never forget how delectable the bowl of pasta Bolognese or the plates of fresh vegetables and pork. Everything at the restaurant was incredible and full-flavored. Even though the restaurant was fabulous, this quality of cooking wasn't solely unique to that establishment. Most restaurants in the city were the same way.

The restaurants of Bologna pride themselves on retaining the authenticity of traditional italian cooking. They don’t serve spaghetti with alfredo sauce or chicken parmesan to gain popularity among tourists, they serve the dishes founded on recipes that have been around for generations, and it works for them. Bologna is heralded as the food capital of Italy because of their loyalty to Italian ingredients and classic cooking techniques. Without the influence of tourists, the restaurants of Italy could see a revival of Italian culinary traditions similar to the city of Bologna.

Conclusion

COVID-19 has taken the lives of thousands of Italians and created an unparalleled economic downturn. While those facts cannot be ignored, there is a silver lining: a renewed faith in Italy. From cooking together to singing together on balconies, Italians have used their time in quarantine to remember what makes Italy so great: family, food, and traditions.

Eventually, Italy’s borders will re-open and tourism will once again become the driving economic force of the country. My hope is not that Italians become unwelcoming to the tourists, but that some of the Italian values and traditions that Italians rediscovered during quarantine will 32 outlast the virus and redirect the future of Italian cuisine. In the future, I hope for there to be more of a balance between economic prosperity and authenticity.

In this short amount of time, I don't have much of a defense. What I recommend is further research in the effects that have on food systems. I have reached out to a couple of people who work in the field of Italian food studies, including Fabio Parasecoli, the author of

Food Culture in Italy, as well as Sonia Massari, the director of Gusto Lab Food Systems, and ​ professors at the University of . Below, I have attached proof of my contact below. In an ideal world, I would have heard back their opinion and included some of their thoughts in my research. Two years from now, I would like to look and see if Italy has retained some of the values people have learned from the quarantine.

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Ivy Lee was born in New York City on February 14, 1998, and moved with her family to

London, Florence, Miami, Fort Worth, and then Dallas in 2013. She enrolled in the Plan II

Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 and spent her spring semester at

Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, her Junior year of University. She graduated in the Spring of 2020 and plans to move to Miami in the summer.