Today I don't so much want to tell you about an experience of mine, as to ask for your opinion on what could become a collective experience as well as a way of life, borrowed once again from the New World.
Needless to mention that Italian excellence in food and drinking well has been consolidating and is recognized worldwide. Rather, I would like to focus on the fact that unfortunately recently a counter-trend is taking place: in fact, if on the one hand our culinary culture is exported all over the world, on the other hand ethnic restaurants and fast-food restaurants, the protagonists of this speech of mine, are now proliferating on our territory as well. We are used to seeing in American movies double-breasted managers equipped with briefcases who, from the upper floors of their offices all leather chairs and glass windows, go down to the street to take lunch breaks in front of traveling carts selling improbable hot-dogs overflowing with mustard (or as they call it, mustard), drinking from those huge paper cups of coffee, or at least drinks that vaguely taste like it, but less strong and washed-out in color. Others offer falafel, pastrami, donuts, noodles and so on. It is not on the significance of the hastily eaten lunch that I would like to dwell on, as it is no longer considered news that today's hectic pace has imposed a (pass me the ugliness of the term) similar food 'unruliness,' but rather on the fact that this practice is becoming more and more established even in our Bel Paese. It used to be that 'sandwiching' was just 4 a.m., post-disco stuff; it was the basking in the idea of destroying one's liver with fried food and fat, so much so that one could indulge in it for an evening. Now, especially in view of Expo 2015 in Milan and its twenty million visitors in six months, the idea of traveling wheelbarrows serving any kind of anti-protein bomb around the city seems to be making its way as a real opportunity. Now I wonder, as a proposal, it is not bad, especially since it is borrowed from a continent from which we love to extirpate customs, but instead of hamburgers and fish and chips, wouldn't it be appropriate to propose sandwiches with salami from Felino, culatello from Zibello and prosciutto crudo from Parma? Why not propose takeaways of diced dop cheeses and glasses of doc wine? So I cannot help but wonder why instead of using this opportunity to confirm ourselves as leaders in the food sector, at least in that, we might find ourselves offering the same products that our guests could find anywhere in the world. Personally, when I visit a foreign country I do not go in search of pizzerias.
I would like to know your opinion on this matter.
