Why Italians Are Very Territorial About Food, According To Stanley Tucci

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It's safe to say that Stanley Tucci is a bit preoccupied with food. The beloved character actor whom you may have seen in "The Devil Wears Prada" or "Conclave" has written a number of books (including "Taste: My Life Through Food" and "What I Ate In One Year") concerning his relationship with food. Not only that, but his Emmy Award-winning travel series "Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy" sees him exploring this beautiful country and tasting just about everything he can fit on a fork. So, it's no surprise he has some insight as to how intense Italians can get about food; specifically, how territorial they get over regional differences.

In an interview with the BBC, Tucci mused on the regionality of Italian cuisine. "When you say to someone, 'You're from Italy', they'll say, 'No, I'm from Tuscany' or 'I'm from Florence', so they're very territorial, especially when it comes to food," Tucci said. This territorial nature kicks in even when the territory is as small as a single city, as with Siena, which is made up of many smaller districts called contradas. "They all believe their contrada is the greatest," he said, "and they express that in many ways, including food." (In fairness, if you go to New York City and ask which borough has the best pizza, you're liable to start a fistfight so this is by no means limited to the Old Country.)

As for why Italian food is split into territories (despite a persistent myth about Italian food that says otherwise), it's a matter of history. If you close your eyes and picture Italy as a concept, you may imagine rustic olive gardens in Tuscany (which inspired the decor of Olive Garden) or the gondola-laden canals of Venice; but Italy is a pretty diverse country, geographically speaking, and that's reflected in its food. The northern Alpine region of Italy often makes use of rich ingredients like butter, cheese, and rice (as with ever-popular risotto, which Lidia Bastianich has advice on how to cook), while the cuisine of Sicily is shaped by its Mediterranean location alongside its Arab and Spanish influences. As such, it's identifiable for using less pasta, more seafood, and plenty of pine nuts.

Circling back to something Tucci said in the interview, why do Italians say they're from a certain region rather than from Italy? Why don't they feel like they're part of one country? That's because, for a long time, they weren't. After the Roman Empire fell, different regions of Italy fell into different hands and developed in different directions. The Medici family, a political dynasty in the Republic of Florence, did not consider themselves an Italian family, but rather a Tuscan or Florentine family. Similarly, the Republic of Venice was a powerful European nation in its own right until the late 18th century, one that just happened to be located on the Italian peninsula. In the 19th century, all these regions were united as one country, but certainly not one cuisine.