Italy is celebrating Italian cooking's Unesco recognition as 'intangible cultural heritage'. Photo / Getty Images
They lit up the Colosseum in the green, white and red of the Italian flag and celebrated with an evening concert, where government officials gave triumphant speeches to herald the big news.
Yet for many jubilant Italians, the new honour simply validates the obvious: their cooking is worthy of global recognition.
Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, yesterday proclaimed Italian cooking as “intangible cultural heritage”, bestowing the designation without dissent at its annual meeting in New Delhi, where it is also inscribing a host of other traditions – from swimming pool culture in Iceland to miniature art in Afghanistan.
The honour comes with no cash award for Italy but abundant bragging rights, which the Italians are maximising to, well, the max.
Unesco has honoured a multitude of culinary traditions since it began the “intangible cultural heritage” list in the 2000s.
The authors of Italy’s bid describe the entry as the broadest ever for a national cuisine, arguing that it covers not just a regional technique or a specific meal or type of food, but the expansive concept of “Italian cooking” – as a low-waste, high-value tradition in a country where food is cherished as an expression of self and culture. Waist size is a matter for other authorities.
Unesco, in a statement to the Washington Post, cautioned that the designation “does not recognise or inscribe an entire ‘nation’s cuisine’ as such”.
The body noted other inscribed culinary heritages, such as the inclusion in 2010 of traditional Mexican cooking in the “State of Michoacan and across Mexico” and the “Gastronomic meal of the French”, defined as “a fixed structure, commencing with an aperitif (drinks before the meal) and ending with liqueurs, containing in between at least four successive courses”.
Previous inscriptions to the list have also included a multi-country bid, among them Italy, to recognise the glories of “the Mediterranean diet”.
Even some international officials who work closely with Unesco conceded that the “Italian cooking” entry – which had the star-power backing of celebrity chef Massimo Bottura – felt somehow different.
Italian cooking is extremely regional – from saffron risotto in Milan to cannoli in Sicily.
Rather than singling out any region or dish, as it has done in the past, Unesco recognised “Italian cooking” more generally as a “communal activity that emphasises intimacy”, “shared moments around the table”, and the “transition of labours, skills and memories across generations”.
“Several other [entries] related to a particular cuisine, such as the practices associated with Peruvian ceviche,” said Francisco Humberto Cunha, a professor at Brazil’s University of Fortaleza who also does researcher for Unesco. “However, with such a significant scope, the case of Italy is truly the first.”
Italy is among Unesco’s favourites, now boasting 21 designations on the intangible list, albeit several in conjunction with other nations.
Pier Luigi Petrillo, the academic who helped champion the Italian cooking entry, previously served as president of the Unesco evaluation body for intangible cultural heritage from February 2022 to February 2023.
In an interview with the Post, Petrillo dismissed questions about whether his previous links had any influence on the outcome – saying he “does not even know” the current members.
The dossier for the bid, he said, focused on Italian cooking “as an act of love”.
“We do not speak about recipes, about food, about products, about dishes, about how to prepare traditional food,” he said.
Unlike better known Unesco World Heritage sites – such as Peru’s Machu Picchu or Cambodia’s Angkor Wat – the “intangible” designation is reserved for the preservation of customs, knowledge and skills.
Though largely symbolic, inscriptions are viewed as a political victory for countries that secure them and can stir controversy.
One case in point: Morocco and Algeria’s recent war of words over who lays claim to the caftan.
To the victor goes the spoils of a useful marketing tool.
Italian government officials are already signalling that the Unesco designation could give lift to their global battle against “Italian sounding foods” (think “parmesan cheese” from Wisconsin as opposed to the real McCoy – Parmigiano-Reggiano – from the Italian state of Emilia Romagna).
The Unesco designation, Italian Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida said, could help shield Italian producers from “Italian-sounding” products, or what he called “unfair competition from producers attempting to imitate our products, passing them off as Italian, and … miscommunication towards consumers – who will think they’re buying something flavourful and healthy, but will rather end up with a fake”.
The Italian Government strongly backed the nomination. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, speaking at an event to promote the bid in September, declared that “we want to take one of the most extraordinary things we have, which best speaks to our culture, identity, tradition, strength, but also our economy – Italian cuisine is worth around €250 billion worldwide – and we want to make it recognised”.
Nevertheless, the decision to highlight Italian cooking so broadly could raise eyebrows in other countries with rich and perhaps more ancient culinary traditions, leaving Unesco potentially open to criticism of being overly Eurocentric.
Even within Italy, the designation has inflamed passions.
Alberto Grandi, a professor in the Italian food mecca of Emilia-Romagna who has received threats and insults for his insistence that Italian cuisine today is essentially a post-World War II invention partly reimported from immigrant diasporas in the New World, dismissed the Unesco designation as woefully unwarranted.
“I’m thinking in particular of the Chinese, whose gastronomic culture is at least more varied than ours [and with more] historical depth,” he said.
“This is clearly a forced [designation] considering how Italy is but one of the many cuisines around the world.”
When asked about Grandi’s comments, Bottura, perhaps the best-known Italian chef today, said: “There are too many people who talk too much and think too little”.
Bottura, proprietor of the hallowed Osteria Francescana in Modena, worked with Maddalena Fossati Dondero, editor in chief of the celebrated culinary magazine La Cucina Italiana, to develop Italy’s Unesco bid in the months following the Covid-19 pandemic. A previous government shelved the proposal.
Meloni’s right-wing Government, which has made defence of Italian food culture a national rallying cry, embraced the push for a Unesco designation as a priority.
“I think there is no other country that I have visited, and I have visited the world,” that touches Italy’s culinary prowess, Bottura said, adding that, in his view, only Japan could come close to matching Italy’s culinary excellence.
“You will see Italian restaurants … everywhere,” he added. “New Jersey or California or Patagonia or South Africa, even in Russia you have Italian restaurants that are always fully booked. Because people love” Italy’s food.
Fossati, when asked about comparisons with the other celebrated cuisines of Europe, insisted that the Italians beat the French, hands down.
“French home cuisine is not as strong as Italy,” she declared.
Gilles Pudlowski, the noted French food critic, gave the situation a finer slice.
“Personally I love both: French traditional cuisine and Italian,” Pudlowski said.
“For olive oil and pasta, Italians are the kings. But for foie gras, lobster, choucroute or steak au poivre, blanquette and oeuf mayo, French are obviously the best!”
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