Why come to Italy? The FOOD! Italian cuisine is famous and eating in Italy is half the fun of your visit.
Cuisine in Florence is not only important for your experience as a traveler but to Italian culture. Man uses many factors to determine how to select, prepare, and consume food. Unlike animals, man uses a symbolic mind to convert food into a symbol. It is human nature to give food, and our habits surrounding food, meaning. This concept is actually more obvious than it might seem as it is universally accepted in our modern world that not everyone eats everything. Diet is dependent on everything from religion to culture to geographic location/accessibility to simple preference. Each cultural group defines its identity often by using food, and understanding of culture, both in history and today, requires recognizing the significance of those man food choices.
The recipe of the dish alone from an anthropological point of view is the wrong way to analyze a meal because it does not suggest anything about the origin or the meaning of the dish. By doing this, one is not properly recognizing the significance of food, ingredients, and cuisine within the greater context of history and culture.
The food sign is a new analytic instrument that establishes connection between ingredients and cultural meaning. The food sign is made of the signifier and signified. The signifier includes all the ingredients that are used in the realization of the recipe and the preparation way. The signified is the concept or meaning, negative or positive, that culture gives to a specific food, prepared or not prepared, and the use of it that the same culture makes within its particular world. Food not only constitutes social relations in the modern world but can also reveal the history of culture in how civilizations were relocated and colonized/decolonized. For example, Italian culinary culture is clearly varied from cultures like Greek, Roman, Arab, Chineses, and even more civilizations.
Ultimately, food is not just food. Pizza is an excellent example of this. Especially as an American who has grown up with a very narrow understanding of the significance of pizza despite always being familiar with pizza, I now understand the significance of a seemingly simple recipe. The signifier of pizza is what makes it literally “pizza”: dough, cheese, tomatoes, vegetables, meat, etc. The signified facts of pizza are that it is normally eaten hot for lunch or dinner in an informal way. The cultural connection with this might be that it is a more casual or comfortable meal with family or close friends. For me, this example is pizza as a major comfort meal.
So… what should you eat while you’re here?
Papardelle al cinghiale
Papardelle is a long, wide, flat pasta usually paired with a heavy sauce, such as a ragu. Cinghiale is wild boar, which is delicious!
Gelato
Florence has some of the best gelato in Italy. Small batch sellers are the way to go. These are the real deal gelato vendors. You must try out La Sorbettiera!
Crostini
Small pieces of Tuscan bread topped with different sauces, purees or vegetable salsas. These are the best snacks or pre-meal bites!
