This week we went to Fico Eataly world in Bologna. The entire place is built to be welcoming and positive. The building is filled with natural light and fun instrumentals play throughout the day. The decor is modern and funky, and combines natural elements with a lot of plants throughout the building. The staff is very welcoming and greet everyone with a cheerful “Ciao!”

            During our tour, a clear picture of Italian culture and cuisine was painted. The tour guide emphasized the variety of food in Italy due to the varying climates and subsequent high rates of biodiversity throughout the country. There was also an emphasis on how many of the products are homemade, and must be crafted by hand. They clearly stated that machines will never be able to replace humans in the making of certain foods, such as some cheeses. One demonstration showed an employee sticking her bare hand into a vat of cheese curds and pulling them out for us to sample. Knowing that Americans are typically not fond of such practices, the tour guide immediately offered an explanation. She explained that you can only feel the true consistency of the cheese with your hands, not with gloves or a machine. Italians are used to such things and do not even notice when the employee touches food with her hands, while people from other countries typically comment on such actions because they do not understand them.

This emphasized the authenticity of Italian food as well, something they seem to take pride on. This reminded me of our class discussion on this week’s reading assignment by Montanari. Montanari mentioned that tomatoes originated from the Americas, and not Italy. This raised the question of what is “authentic” Italian food? If all the ingredients in typical Italian meals originate from different countries, are those truly Italian dishes? It was a question I thought of often throughout the tour.       

After the initial tour, there were a variety of stations that we went to that provided us with brief overviews of some of my favorite Italian foods. I enjoyed learning about prosciutto, however I was sad to hear about pigs being bred just to become prosciutto in 12 months. The parmesan cheese course was very interesting as well. I did not realize how much milk went into making just one wheel of parmesan, and was even more surprised to learn that the kind we tasted was lactose free. Later I had a crepe from Venchi with what I assumed was Nutella, but was informed by the woman working the counter that it was a much better version of Nutella. This again showed me the pride Italians have in their homemade products. The final station was the wine course, which was good but almost too informational. I felt like this summed up the day because the tour also provided very interesting information about Italy’s food, but I can only recall some because of how much they told us.