"To eat good is to be closer to God" was a phrase mentioned in the film Big Night, used by Primo, one of the main characters, to describe his passion about food, meaning that eating a good dish makes people feel in paradise. In this movie, cooking was described in a religious and passionate way, it is presented as art, not only by the way it looks, but by how carefully it is prepared and how meaningful it is to the chef so that it becomes a way of expression, every cooking scene makes us feel part of that romance that exists between Primo and his cooking.

As we may remember, the plot of the movie involved the competition between the two restaurants, Paradise and Pascal's Italian Grotto, where Pascal’s restaurant had more success because he was not trying to defend the traditional Italian cuisine, but instead tried to indulge the clients. Pascal did not mind going against the Italian culinary ethics as long as his American clients attended to his restaurant and he generated income. As Rose DeAngelis and Donald R. Anderson's mention in their article Gastronomic Miscuglio: Foodways in Italian-American Narrative, “Food for Pascal has nothing to do with family, tradition, and community, and everything to do with "good business."” (61) He gave the clients what they asked for, even if that meant to represent an erroneous Italian stereotype, as long as he didn’t lose his consumers.  

Why was it so important for Primo to conserve his values in the Italian cuisine? It would have been easier to simply give the clients what they were asking for, but Primo was a passionate cook and a proud Italian. Values are the essence of who we are as human beings and are a very telling of our culture and heritage. If he had chosen to ignore his values, his food would lack that special something that could only be obtained from a true Italian chef. And, in Italy, food is not just something you eat, there is a great respect for the culinary arts. Each pasta has certain sauces that you can put on top, the dishes have to be served at specific times (antipasti, primi, secondi, contorni, etc), and each of the culinary rules have to be respected, the clients must always follow the chef’s indications. As mentioned in Thomas Ferraro’s article Feeling Italian. The Art of Ethnicity in America “In Italy, the customer is not always right; the guest/host relation of hospitality is not exactly what transpires when a stranger comes to dine; and there are things too precious to be left to an advantageous exchange rate, international goodwill, or nouvelle caprice.” (Ferraro, 182) Which explain Primo’s reactions to people complaining because they did not get their Americanized Italian dishes.

What made Pascal successful? He succeeded because he had just what the clients were looking for. If they wanted meatballs in their spaghetti, he created the dish for them, if they wanted to listen to an Americanized version of classic Neapolitan songs, he found the right artists to perform them. He always knew how to keep the client satisfied either by giving them a free bottle of wine or by simply smiling at them, even if they represented Primo’s concept of “criminals”. Pascal figured that satisfying the clients was the way to succeed in the American world, which represents that the key to success when it came to Italians and, not just food but every part of their culture, was the assimilation.

During the first wave of immigration, many southern italians moved to the United States and this was not an easy task. It all started after the unification of Italy, while the northern Italians were being economically favored, the southern Italians were running out of jobs, there was a great poverty to the point where eating meat had become luxury. The transfer not only to a different country, but to a different continent, was a very difficult journey, mostly financially. As mentioned in the essay “From Family Meals to Four Stars: The Establishment of Italian-American Cuisine in New York City” by Will Levitt, “An early report from 1872 revealed that Italian immigrants were often forced to sell their homes and their farms to make the trip.” The immigrants would do anything they could in order to achieve their american dream, succeed, and finish the crisis they were facing in their hometown. This displacement became so common that “From 1880 to 1920, one in four immigrants to the United States originated in Sicily.” (Levit, 6). Nevertheless, this was a very challenging process. The adaptation and acceptation of Americans was a procedure that took a long time, and it wasn’t until after World War II that they began being welcomed in their culture. Before this, the Italian immigrants were lynched, offended, discriminated, they were denied jobs and housing just because they came from Italy. In fact, “According to statistics, in 1910 Italians were the lowest-paid of all ethnic groups in America, making only $10.50 per week.” (Levit, 16). Nonetheless, little by little they accomplished their mission of joining the American culture. They had to find the keys to being accepted, and they realized that the easiest ways was to become one of them. As explained in the book Are Italians White? How Race is Made In America by Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno,  “Virtually all Italian immigrants arrived in the United States without a consciousness about its color line. But they quickly learned that to be white meant having the ability to avoid many forms of violence and humiliation, and assured preferential access to citizenship, property, satisfying work, livable wages, decent housing, political power, social status,and a good education, among other privileges. “White” was both a category into which they were most often placed, and also a consciousness they both adopted and rejected.”  

Just as in the movie Big Night the restaurant owners realized that the Italian culinary rules did not work as in their hometown, in real life, the Italian communities in the United States (US)  learned too what the key to success was. The love for food in the US could not even compare to the passion and respect felt for it in Italy. The perfect tactic in order to be able to have a prosperous restaurant, was to adapt and assimilate their Italian culture into the American one. This takes makes us analyze that the assimilation between cultures is not only represented by language and religion, but also in their food. As silly as it may sound food is a fundamental part of the Italian culture and the fact of letting the American culture influence the way they are raised respecting, is a very significant aspect when it comes to what Italians had to give up in order to be welcomed in America.

-Mariana Barrios


Works Cited:

• Guglielmo, Jennifer, et al. Are Italians White?: How Race Is Made in America. Routledge, 2003.
• Logemann, Jan, et al. Europe, Migration and Identity: Connecting Migration Experiences and Europeanness. Routledge, 2014.
• Will Levitt. From Family Meals to Four Stars: The Establishment of Italian-American Cuisine in New York City. 2012