haute cuisine
Italian minister appalled at restaurants abroad: ‘Become the subject of jokes’
A woman with Italian food. Incidentally, no Parmesan should be used on fish dishes.
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Pizza, pasta & co. are among the favorite foods of all for many Germans. In fact, not every Italian restaurant lives up to the high standards of Italian chefs. An Italian minister, on the other hand, now wants to head towards it.
Italian cuisine has a good reputation to lose: pizza, pasta & co. have fans all over the world, and the Mediterranean diet is even said to have health benefits. It’s just too bad that the quality of the food abroad can’t always keep up with that in Italy – and sometimes even chefs without any experience of Italian cuisine slander their good names.
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At least that’s how Francesco Lollobrigida, the Italian Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry, sees it, and now wants to take countermeasures. At an event hosted by Italian star chef Norbert Niederkofler, he railed against the free-riding restaurant owners: “Enough of restaurants that call themselves Italian and use products that aren’t, enough of chefs who don’t know how to cook Italian and often become the subject of jokes”.
In order to uphold the good reputation of Italian cuisine abroad, the Italian government is now planning a package of measures to protect “real” Italian restaurants abroad. As a result, a kind of identification mark or seal should also be developed by which customers can recognize certified Italian restaurants: “We can do this by recognizing, also through a specification, the real Italian restaurants abroad. The government is working on a new project which we will be getting underway shortly”.
Incidentally, this project is not entirely new: as early as 2004, the Italian Ministry of Agriculture carried out a test for a seal of quality for “real Italian cuisine”. At that time, five Berlin restaurants received a seal from Ardi, the International Association of Italian Restaurants, in a pilot program.
Sources: “morning mail”, “Il Gusto”