Serious Eats
Is It Still Italian If It's Not Made by an Italian?
The New York Times raises the question of authenticity of Italian cuisine as it examines the growing number of foreign chefs cooking in kitchens of Italian restaurants. Does, say, an Indian chef preparing Italian food make it any less Italian? One restaurant owner claims that "it's not racism, it's culture"; another says that the ethnicity of a chef changes nothing. This isn't anything new in restaurants in the U.S., but it might be a different story if you're eating abroad: Do you go to the Italian restaurant manned by the Chinese family or stick to the one run by Italians?