Out of Pod Experience

right thats it ! ...im calling in jamie oliver !...turkey twizzelrs FTW

upon reflection ...they are prolly more nutricious than the shite that findus foods has been selling us

LOL Only in America does something as cheap and easy as a pizza cost $27. Come to Italy and I'll buy you the best pizza you've ever had for about 5 bucks. Ok, 7 bucks with a liter of beer.

Some of those pizzas look like they had real mozzarella, however, and not that fake plastic stringy garbage they tend to put on there. Mozzarella comes in a ball about the size of a baseball constantly submerged in water. If it's not, it's not mozzarella and is probably killing you slowly. A $30 pizza had better come with back rubs and blowjobs.

Love that movie! I'm American, but now that I'm living here, however, it doesn't make any sense. Americans are MUCH louder, but I never realized it until I went back home recently. Even I'm loud, and I've been living here for years! I think it's in our DNA.

I know what constitutes as "pizza" back home...and I can tell you that that pizza is 30 bucks because it's San Francisco and not the quality of the pizza, especially that first photo. Leave it to SF to make something as basic and poor as pizza into something elitist and expensive to the point people actually blog about it. Should I send some polenta as well? 10 bucks a slice?

Let's not even get into the fettucine "alfredo" , which doesn't even exist and no Italian would dare touch it. But what tourists don't know won't hurt em, hehehehe.

Also, once you learn the Italian language, you start realizing just how AWFUL anything and everything is translated in the media which touts as authentic and realistic, aka, The Godfather, the Sopranos (gabbagool? WTF IS THAT? Do they make that **** up as they go along?), etc. For example, "pepperoni" (which should actually be spelled "peperone") is a bell pepper, NOT MEAT. The "one" means big in Italian...hence, "big pepper". What everyone calls "pepperoni" is salame piccante, better known as salamino. Any pizzeria that calls salamino "pepperoni" should be burned to the ground.

Come to me, my friend. I shall teach you the ways of real Italian cooking and drink. That's another thing: what the hell is everyone's deal with wine tasting? No one here is jerking each other off, waxing pseudo-intellectual on the properties of grapes and wine...we drink it and that's the end of it. Unless it's an extremely expensive and fine wine (which would run you about 25-30 bucks) and saved for special occasions, you can drink it out of nearly any glass, at least nearly any red wine. I laugh my ass off every time I see these wine dorks prancing and posing with these giant wine glasses. Wine is drunk at just about every meal. Any glass will do. That is one thing The Sopranos got right: Junior Soprano drinking his wine on the kitchen table in a straight glass. If it's good wine, the glass won't make a difference.

As you can see, I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to food or people trying to pass off their half-ass bullshit as authentic.

...or did something fundamentally change between 1988 and now ??

Bah, Naples! Good food, crappy everything else. It's the Detroit of Italy. That region is like a completely different country.

I dunno what it is, and maybe it's because I'm from the deep south in the US, but when I went back home recently, it just seemed like Americans learned how to whisper in a saw mill. I never noticed it before, but people talk as if they're having a conversation with the entire world and are determined everyone hears what they have to say. I get off the plane in Atlanta, and the boarding personnel are talking to one another, and one girl says loud enough for EVERYONE to hear, "F*CK THAT MOTHERF*CKER!!!" No shame, like she wanted everyone to hear it. Then you go out to eat or something and you can hear every single conversation in the room without even trying to listen. Go out to see a movie and people talk like they're at home. I didn't remember it like that when I was living in the states, but when I went back it just struck me as odd. My little brothers came to visit me (they're in college) in Italy last summer, and they have zero control over the volume of their voice it seems. Whether we're at a pub or it's 3 am and I'm trying to sleep, they just talk like it's 3 pm and out for a stroll.

Then you go to Venice and you can hear American girls a good 100 meters away before you can even see them, even over all the other noise and crowd...again, like they want the entire city of Venice to hear what they have to say. Most of the time it's harmless, but like I said, I think it's part of our DNA. I have a big booming voice apparently, and I tend to speak louder than most Italians without realizing it, even when I'm speaking Italian. My wife has to tell me to quiet down sometimes, hehehe.

I second this.

Although I'm a staunch Florentine supporter myself. They have square pizza!

That quote is so true. You can see just how different Italy is, even just within its own borders...and we're not talking north vs. south here. We're talking about an hour's train ride from Lazio to Campagna (Rome to Naples). It's like crossing into East Germany during the Cold War.

It has to be said, however, that while Naples is a giant shithole, the surrounding area is absolutely gorgeous, such as Amalfi, Capri, etc. The scenes with Queen Amidala and Anakin in her palace and on Naboo? That was shot in Caserta, close to Naples, and that palace is an actual palace there and not CGI.

I live in the mountainous northeast, bordering Austria and Slovenia. People in Friuli speak Italian but that's not even their own language; it's actually Friulano, a language (not a dialect, an actual language) that is spoken more than Italian and was brought here by Attila the Hun. It's like a cross between Italian, Latin, and Slavic. I actually prefer it here, as I love the Alps and Dolomite. The food is impeccable, but northerners are complete pussies when it comes to spices. Being from Louisiana, I love spicy food and I end up having to go to stores here that carry all the Calabrese spicy foods when I'm craving it.

Traveling to the south is an experience to say the least. It's much more laid back and relaxed, but is also much more frustrating. Northern Italy is pretty much like any other European country, only with better food and better landscape. It's still got problems, but just like anywhere else in Europe these days. It's quite organized and efficient and wealthy. The south has its merits, however, most notably the food. Working in the south is completely ridiculous...they have a way of doing things that is just completely foreign, not just to me but to many northerners here. Granted, it's not as bad as Spain or Greece, but it's close. Everyone comes to the north if they want to work or leave the country altogether. That's a big problem in Italy, actually. Italy exports some of the best physicists in the EU, as you can see just by visiting CERN in Switzerland; the Italian scientific program is excellent, and due to the stupidity of the elected officials inability to invest in their own country's minds, they instead choose to be corrupt.

We have one here. Well, it's no longer a Taco Bell - But until a couple years ago, it was, and the bell is still there. After a brief stint as a Filipino food joint, it's now an authentic run-by-Mexicans deep-Mexico taco joint. How authentic is it? 85% of the clientelle is immigrant Mexicans. Most of the rest are from Guatemala or other central-American countries. Plus a few Norteños such as myself who appreciate authenticity in our ethnic foods.

That reminds of a joint down in Globe, AZ. It was quite literally a hole in the wall joint but what that was probably the best Mexican food I have ever had, and this was when I was like 12 and didn't even like vegetables or spicy foods.

We've got a small restaurant up here in my town and they are ok but it seems like there's no spice to many of their dishes, or maybe I was expecting something different. It's the first place that I've seen that serves cactus which to me tasted much like green beans, just really mild.

Dude.
Lumpia. Pancit. Chicken inasal. Cebu BBQ. Llocos empanada. Lechon. Even Adobo (done right).

But I've spent a lot of time around Filipinos, so I may be biased.