Italian Dishes Italians Don’t Eat

Italian culture is rich with traditions and beauty. It's no surprise that people want to eat, drink, and dress like they are from the boot-shaped country. In Italy, only the finest will do, from designer clothes to stylish shoes to teeny tiny cups of strong black coffee. In Italy, food is more than sustenance to fuel the body; instead, it is an art form to be celebrated and enjoyed, from pasta to pizza to perfectly shaped cannoli.

Throughout Italy, each region has its own specialties, like salty prosciutto and aged cheese from Parma, dark balsamic vinegar from Modena, thin-crusted pizzas from Naples, creamy hand-stretched Buffalo mozzarella from Campania, and tangy giradinia spread from Sicily, just to name a few. Adventurous visitors can try spicy nduja salami made with local Calabrian chilies, black squid ink pasta from Sicily, or sizzling sardines fried up crispy, perfect with a glass of cold white wine.

There are so many delicious foods to eat that it's easy to see why everyone loves Italian food. However, many classic dishes made their way to the U.S. when Italian immigrants crossed the pond, and many of these dishes had to be made with American ingredients. These classic dishes morphed into new variations, and Italian-American cuisine was born.

Many Italian American restaurants in the U.S. serve traditional dishes from the homeland alongside dishes that are more American than Italian. If you are curious about authentic foods and wonder which Italian dishes Italians don't eat, let's take a look at foods that seem Italian but you won't find in Italy.

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It doesn't get any more Italian than spaghetti and meatballs, or does it? The traditional pile of pasta topped with tangy red marinara sauce and savory meatballs is a purely American invention. Of course, spaghetti is Italian, as are the red sauce and meatballs, but authentic Italian meatballs are quite different from the golf ball-sized ones on your plate in your local Italian-American restaurant.

Authentic Italian meatballs called polpette are generally smaller and never served with pasta. In Italy, the primo piatto or first plate is usually pasta or risotto, while the secondo piatto is meat or fish, so the meatballs would always be served separately from pasta and rarely with any sauce.

Every American pizza place offers pepperoni pizza. It's the number one pizza topping in the U.S., but not in Italy. Pepperoni is an Italian-American invention that appeared in New York around 1916. The name for our dried, spiced sausage comes from the Italian word for large peppers—peperoni.

So, if you ordered a pepperoni pizza in Italy, you'd likely receive a pizza topped with a variety of bell peppers. The closest thing to American pepperoni pizza is salami pizza. Most salami is fairly mild and lacks the spice that American pepperoni has, so another option to get that spiciness is salami piccante, which has a sharper bite.

While we are on the topic of Italian vs. American pizzas, there are a few key differences that go beyond just tasty toppings. In Italy, most pizzerias serve a thin-crust pizza that comes in one size, and each person orders their own. If eating a whole pizza sounds like too much, it really isn't because the crust is so thin, and the pizzas have fewer toppings and less cheese. Also, when pizza is served in Italy, it is not cut into slices like it is in the U.S. Instead, diners dig in with a knife and fork.

The decadent Caesar salad seems like an Italian dish. It has crisp pieces of lettuce covered in a tangy sauce made with briny anchovies and sprinkled with Italian Parmesano Reggiano cheese and served with chunks of toasted white bread. But this dish isn't Italian, and you won't find anything similar in Italy. However, the salad does have some ties to Italy as the inventor Caesar Cardini was an Italian restauranteur who created this famous salad in his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924.

Apparently, during Prohibition, many wealthy Californians would vacation in Tijuana and enjoy their cocktails. During an Independence Day celebration, Cardini's restaurant was low on food after having a record few days of business, and Cardini created the salad with what he could find in the refrigerator. He gave it a dramatic flair by making it tableside, like a magician delighting his guests with a show to distract from the odd mix of salad fixings.

Despite the Italian-sounding name, pasta primavera is not actually an Italian dish. But primavera is an Italian word meaning springtime, and it is the perfect name for this pasta dish filled with spring veggies like asparagus, peas, and spring onions. This veggie-heavy pasta dish is served with a light sauce made with olive oil and sprinkled with Parmesano Reggiano. Since the veggies are the star of the show, the sauce is kept simple to let the taste of spring come through.

Although the dish was not invented in Italy or even served there, it has ties to Italy because it was invented by an Italian restaurant owner in New York. Diners loved the simple charm of using fresh veggies, and the dish became popular throughout the U.S. but never in Italy.

Who doesn't love thick slices of white bread smothered with garlic infused butter? Garlic bread seems Italian, but it is actually not Italian food at all. Of course, bread is eaten in Italy, but not whole loaves sliced open and covered in butter, garlic, and mozzarella.

The closest thing to garlic bread in Italy is bruschetta, pronounced broo-skeh-tah in Italian. Bruschetta is made with thin slices of Italian ciabatta bread rubbed with olive oil and lightly topped with herbs or fresh tomato. The most classic version is bruschetta di pomodoro, which is just fresh tomatoes sprinkled with sea salt and olive oil.

San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf is considered the birthplace of cioppino. Italian immigrants from coastal regions of Italy immigrated to the Bay area in the 1800s. The seafood soup was heavily influenced by Italian cuisine, but it is completely different from the fish soups you find in coastal regions of Italy. Cioppino, at its core, is a broth made with whatever seafood is available that day mixed with tomatoes and broth. The recipe is fluid and depends on what fish and seafood are available. The word cioppino is from the Italian Ligurian dialect and means chopped or torn to bits, and that's exactly what the soup is: bits of this and that to create a meal. Throughout the years, chefs in San Francisco have elevated cioppino from a simple dish to a specialty dish.

A casserole dish of baked ziti is a satisfying comfort food. It is a mix of pasta, tomato sauce, and plenty of ooey-gooey melted cheese. It is like an Italian spin on classic macaroni and cheese. But this seemingly Italian dish is not actually Italian. The name and the ingredients are examples of Italian immigrants recreating recipes in the US, with locally available ingredients. You won't find baked ziti in Italian restaurants, but you will find other forms of pasta, such as pasta al forno or baked pasta. These dishes are generally not drowned in heavy sauce and cheese like baked ziti.

Creamy white sauce ladled over steaming pasta is the base of this dish, which was invented in Rome in the early 1900s. The original fettucini Alfredo looked very different from the one served in Italian-American restaurants today. Italian chef Alfredo kept the dish simple with just butter and Parmegiano Reggiano; he basically took the simple pasta al burro or butter noodles and added cheese.

But the Italian-American version features a heavy cream-based sauce and an added protein like chicken or shrimp. This over-the-top version of fettuccini Alfredo is not Italian, and you won't find it on the menu in authentic Italian restaurants, but you might find pasta al burro.

The chicken dish with the Italian name seems more French than Italian, but it's actually an Italian-American invention. It is rare to find this dish on menus in Italy, but the flavors are uniquely Italian or, to be more precise, Sicilian. Chicken piccata is a simple dish of chicken that has been pounded flat, then fried and covered in a sauce made with lemon, butter, and capers.

Lemon and capers are traditional Sicilian ingredients, but the dish as a whole was not eaten in Sicily, possibly because chicken was expensive and not widely available. Some food historians believe the flavors were brought by Italian immigrants in the 1930s and that veal was probably used rather than chicken at the time because it was cheaper. Even if you can't find it on authentic Italian menus, this dish is a great one for home cooks to master. It's elegant, has bright, zesty flavors, and is sure to impress dinner guests.

It is not against the law to call something Italian even when it's not, so technically, Italian dressing is a legal term, but any Italian will tell you it's not used in Italy. Italian dressing is an American invention made with oil, sugar, and spices; it's sort of like an Americanized version of a simple vinaigrette.

Bottled salad dressing is an American invention, and most cuisines, including Italian, French, and other Mediterranean cuisines, dress salads with a mix of olive oil, lemon, and salt. In many regions, olive oil and vinegar are on the tables for diners to add to their salads. Only in the U.S. supermarket will you find whole aisles dedicated to salad dressing. However, despite false advertising, Italian dressing is not Italian, but many consumers don't care as it's still one of the top salad dressings sold to consumers in the U.S.

Whenever the word diavolo or diablo is part of the name of a dish, you can be sure that it is a spicy dish and will invoke a fire in your mouth. Lobster fra diavolo is one of those dishes. It's a spicy seafood dish made with lobster in a spicy red sauce served with pasta. Despite the Italian name, the dish is an Italian-American invention from a New York restaurant. There are several restaurants that take credit for the spicy seafood recipe, the earliest dates dating back to 1908.

The key reason that lobster fra diavolo is not Italian is that it uses Maine lobster, which isn't found in Italian cooking. And in Italy pasta is served as the first course, and seafood is usually part of the second course. In addition, most pasta sauces are not spicy. The exception to that is in Calabria, where the hot Calabrian chili is used in regional dishes.

If you have never had lobster fra diavolo and you like spicy seafood dishes, it is definitely worth trying. Many Italian-American restaurants serve it with the lobster still in the shell, making it a deliciously messy dish, so be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get ready to work for your meal, cracking the lobster shell and digging out those flavorful pieces of meat. If you prefer to eat this in the privacy of your own home, you can find an excellent recipe for lobster fra diavolo from a well-known East Coast chef who knows his way around a lobster.

While the dish isn't Italian, in coastal regions of Italy, you can find lobster dishes, but they are made with langostini, which look like a cross between lobsters, prawns, and crayfish. These are often grilled and served with garlic and butter.

Stromboli is a cousin to the Italian calzone, making it a second cousin to pizza, but stromboli isn't an authentic Italian food. Pizza came first and was created in Naples in the early 1800s. It was a simple food sold in street stalls. The calzone, which is basically a folded-over pizza, was created as a way to eat a pizza while on the go. The calzone has the same dough and fillings as a pizza; it's just folded over to be carried and eaten with one hand.

Stromboli was an invention of Italian immigrants that made its appearance in Philadelphia in 1950. It is made with pizza dough that has been stretched into a rectangle and then filled with sauce, ham, cheese, and other goodies, folded into a log, and then sliced to serve. Traditionally, stromboli has ham or other similar meats like coppa, speck, or prosciutto, but stromboli can have any combination of ingredients from peppers to olives to mushrooms to whatever your imagination can think of to put in it.

If you have ever been lucky enough to attend a wedding in Italy, you may have been surprised to find that Italian wedding soup is not actually served at weddings. Instead, this soup is an Americanized version of minestra maritata, which is made with vegetables and bits of leftover meat. The confusion is because of how it was translated; the wedding is between the meat and vegetables and not actual people. The soup was a staple meal combining a little bit of everything available and, depending on the household, it may have escarole, Swiss chard, carrots, onion, celery, potatoes, and whatever little bits of meat were available.

When the soup crossed the Atlantic and made its way onto menus in Italian American restaurants, it was made with meatballs and less veggies to accommodate American tastes. But the truly unique thing about this savory soup is that the recipe is fluid and adaptable to whatever veggies and meat are on hand.

Fresh submarine sandwich with ham, cheese, bacon, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and onions on wooden cutting board

The hit series "The Bear" has popularized the Italian beef sandwich. But this tasty sandwich is not an Italian food but an Italian-American food created and popularized in Chicago. Early Italian immigrants would buy cheap cuts of beef and slowly braise them with spices until they were tender, cut them into thin slices, and serve on homemade rolls. The sandwich is usually served with sauteed peppers and onions and topped with either sweet or hot giardiniera. Some places add on a melted layer of Provolone or Swiss, but that is a modern take on the sandwich.

In Italy, sandwiches are generally not like these overfilled stuffed sandwiches that require two hands and a plate to eat. Instead, most places sell a simpler version with prosciutto and cheese on Italian ciabatta bread or between two pieces of focaccia.

If you are a fan of "The Bear" and want to try the famous Italian beef sub sandwich, you need to go to Chicago, not Italy.

We are sorry to break the news, but everyone's favorite breaded chicken cutlet covered in sauce and melted cheese is not Italian. Instead, it is a take on the Sicilian dish melanzane alla parmigiana or eggplant parmesan. In Sicily, eggplant parmesan is made with slices of fried eggplant layers between tangy red sauce and melted cheese. Some versions add ricotta, too.

But this original dish never had meat partly because the meat was expensive, and most Sicilians could not afford it. When the recipe came to the U.S. via Italian immigrants, meat was more widely available and accessible, and the dish was transformed into chicken parmesan and even veal parmesan. However, you won't find this heavier version anywhere in Italy.

Have you ever wondered what is a scampi? Scampi is an Italian word for any type of crustacean, like Mediterranean langostini, prawns, and shrimp. It also refers to the cooking style using butter, garlic, and white wine. While shrimp scampi is on menus at many Italian-American restaurants, it is not found in Italy. In the U.S., the dish is served with pasta. If you were to order langostini cooked in the scampi style in Italy, it would come with thick slices of crusty white bread and not pasta.

Tetrazzini sounds very Italian for such a non-Italian dish because it was named in honor of Luisa Tetrazzini, an Italian opera singer who traveled the U.S. performing in 1908. Legend goes that a hotel chef wanted to impress the Italian songstress and created this creamy pasta dish using either chicken or turkey, mushrooms, peas, carrots, and thin angel hair pasta.

The whole thing was soaked in heavy cream sauce sprinkled with slivered almonds and baked into a casserole. It is difficult to know if Luisa ever actually ate the dish with her namesake. However, the heavy dish became popular in the 1950s and 60s in America when casseroles were a huge hit. But don't look for this in Italy because it does not exist anywhere in the country.

Many Italian-American restaurants serve the bread baskets with a side of oil and vinegar for dipping, but you won't find that trend in Italy. Generally, bread is not served with butter or a tangy dipping sauce. Most Italian diners save the bread to fare la scarpetta, which translates to making a little shoe and mopping up the leftover sauce on the plate rather than filling it with dipping sauce before the meal.

These brightly colored festive cookies bear the colors of the Italian flag, red, green, and white, and were created by Italian immigrants. These sugar-filled cookies are popular at the feast of San Gennaro, which is celebrated in Naples. The cookies are actually cake-like with soft tri-color layers. You won't find these cookies in Italy, but do not worry. There are plenty of tasty cookies and pastries throughout the country.