Due to the long history of exchange of ideas and recipes and the mixture of regional cooking influences that happened in America ever since Italian immigrants first started to pursue the American dream in the land of opportunities, many new dishes have been created along the way. This is the ultimate list of Italian American dishes that you would never find in a restaurant of the motherland.

First of all, we would like to reveal a secret that every single Italian tourist visiting the United States have always been wondered about: “Who the hell is this Alfredo?!?” Yes, you heard us! This is the story of how, one of the most famous and appreciated Italian American dishes was born. In 1914 in Rome, there was a particular difficult-to-satisfy appetite, the one of Ines di Lelio, wife of Alfredo di Lelio, owner of a small restaurant in Via Della Scrofa.

After giving birth to their second child, she experienced a brief period of postpartum depression accompanied by physical weakness, dizziness and nausea, making her incapable of coming out the bed. Her husband decided to feed her with dishes of plain fresh pasta “in bianco”, adding some butter while scratching on top of it some Parmigiano cheese. Ines felt in love with this dish, so she encouraged her husband to add it to his menu at the restaurant. Coincidentally, at that time, two American icons of the silent movies, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, were celebrating their honeymoon in Rome and they decided to have dinner at Alfredo’s restaurant. They were so impressed by this simple-yet-delicious dish and by Alfredo’s hospitality that, after they went back home, they sent them a gift: a gold fork and a gold spoon, both engraved with the words: “To Alfredo, the King of Noodles”.

Thanks to the two actors’ word-of-mouth around Hollywood, a group of few elites, decided to visit Alfredo’s restaurant during their occasional trips to Rome, creating a “Wall of Fame” with pictures of Alfredo and his illustrious guests. His restaurant became a tourist attraction always kept under control by international paparazzis, because many of them believed that famous actors would frequently eat there.

But the average man’s consumption of this dish never really take off in Italy because, to Italians it never seemed anything more that simple buttered spaghetti with the usual herbs and the always-present Parmigiano cheese. Although its story is very good, nowadays, if you visit Italy, you will realize that nobody has actually ever heard about this dish, neither in restaurants or among Italians.

If you find yourself in a restaurant in Italy, and you don’t want to raise any waiter’s eyebrows, you better ask for a “Cacio e Pepe” or a “Carbonara”. As for the additional presence of various elements like chicken, shrimps and different ratios of milk or cream, this is definitely a “no-no” for them so, don’t ever bother! In Italy, the only time you’ll see the chicken element in your pasta is when you’ll taste livers and kidneys in a lighter version of the ragù sauce made with white meat.  

The second “non-Italian” dish that we would like to talk about is “Spaghetti with Meatballs”. You didn’t know that, did you?! The quintessential Italian meal that the majority of the American people grew up on is, in fact, not Italian at all. Quite the opposite actually, for Italians this represents an atrocious crime against their cuisine!

They do have an equivalent of the meatballs called “polpette”, but they are much smaller in size than the ones you’ll find in America and, they would never be served together with spaghetti; they are normally served alone, made with either meat or fish, but they do not present any type of heavy sauce, and they are typically accompanied by potatoes, beans  and/or various vegetables. The pasta, obviously, it is Italian, but it is served in smaller portions as en entrée and not as the main course.

This dish first appeared in America during the early Twenties. Here, Italian immigrants discover that, in the New World, meat would no longer be a luxury item used only for special occasions, because here it was cheap and available in large quantities, so it became part of their everyday meals. Another reason why this dish became so popular among Italian Americans, was the fact that they weren’t left with much choice for other types of Italian food to count on in the various American grocery stores. It has been very difficult for them at that time, to deal with the scarcity of tomatoes. This really influenced the passage to heavier and thicker sauces for their pastas, upgrading spaghetti as the main course.

Another super famous representative of the Italian American cuisine that you will not find in a restaurant in Italy is the “Pepperoni Pizza”. So, if you happen to be visiting Italy, and you still want to order a spicy salami pizza, don’t use the word “pepperoni”, because in Italian, it actually means “red bell pepper”; you have to say “salame piccante”, which is the correct Italian translation for spicy salami.

Pizza, certainly, keeps occupying a special place in the heart of Italian people, and this special connection is made possible only by the fact that, after all this time, it still has maintained its eternal simplicity, remaining much lighter on the toppings and on both the quantity and specificity of the cheese, respect to any other different version offered almost everywhere in the world. Remember, it is not a real Italian pizza, unless it has mozzarella cheese on it!

Pizza first reached the shores of America, obviously, by the hands of Italian immigrants who, after creating their own communities, especially on the East Coast, start demanding fair representation of their national cuisine. It was the most common and indigent meal that blue-collar Italian immigrants would consume at work, because those who were living in the various Little Italy’s at that time, were experiencing almost extreme poverty. However, the establishment of the first pizzerias was not enough to bring pizza on the dinner tables of every American household.

It took quite some time and a lot of endorsement by illustrious Italian American figures like Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante and baseball icon Joe DiMaggio, in order for pizza to be appreciated on a national level. Also, many Americans had just returned from fighting in Europe during WWII where, most likely, the only positive thing that they got out of this otherwise brutal experience, was the chance to “refine their palates” with delicious European dishes.

Pretty soon after that, pizza began to being subjected to countless modifications by many different cultures present in the United States, which have completely “Americanized” it, in order to make it appealing to everyone’s tastes. The all-beef pepperoni pizza, for example, it’s more of a Hungarian tradition, Italians had no part in that. But that’s just the “tip of the iceberg”; several other versions are very popular around the United States: Greek pizza, Hawaiian pizza, Chicago-style pizza, Detroit-style pizza, New York-style pizza, New Haven-style pizza, California-style pizza, St. Louis-style pizza, and the list goes on and on!

Neapolitans' reactions to pineapple pizza delivery
-Alberto Chiocchetti