I’m always fascinated when I hear some self-proclaimed experts aggrandize their own purported expertise regarding a particular food and they, in so many words, lay unspoken claim to being the culinary cognoscente…the unassailable arbiter whose final decree puts the rest of us on notice that what we like…what pleases our personal palates, apparently matters little. After all…they know so much more than us about that particular food. Or do they?
I was born in the worst slum in the United States, Bed-Stuy, Ward 7, in Brooklyn, New York. My dad was Sicilian, my mother, Irish. Although my brothers and I were exposed, equally, to both sides of our heritage, when it came to food, we ate pretty much every Italian dish imaginable, cooked by people who definitely knew what they were doing in the kitchen. My aunt Rose taught my mom how to cook “Italian.” I mean…really taught her. My mom, fine Irish lass that she was, was one phenomenal Italian cook. So I suppose I could reasonably lay claim to being a pretty good judge of what Italian food is ‘supposed’ to taste like. But…can I? Really?
Take something simple…pizza. Every New Yorker I meet, outside of New York, will criticize any pizza they taste as not being ‘pizza’ at all! They’ll argue heavily that the only pizza worth eating comes from New York. Period! Really? Chicagoans might take issue with that. In Italy, Romans with their Pizza Lazio, or the populace of Naples (pizza napoletana) might also want to weigh in on that subject, especially since pizza originated in their city! Then Wolfgang Puck comes along with his “California-style Pizza” and you take the food into a whole new realm! The fact is, you can get terrific pizza just about anywhere. Like everything else, you need to do a little research.
I was in Austin, Texas two weeks ago meeting with the director of Tom Hanks’ upcoming film Parkland. Both nights I ate steak. Two steakhouses; two fantastic meals! But were they the ‘best’ steaks I’ve ever had? Hard to say. Texans probably think so, but I’ll bet Kansas City residents would argue that point heavily; and don’t expect Chicagoans to sit idly by and not join in that argument! And, by the way, if you ever have the opportunity to taste genuine “Kobe” beef from cattle actually raised in Hyogo Prefecture, you’ll take issue with anyone, anywhere who might claim the ‘best’ steaks come from their ‘hometown’ here in the U.S.
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