L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 4 T h e e l e v e n t h Week of Italian Cuisine in the W o r l d t a k e s place this Novem- ber, and this year's celebra- tions have a new reason to be p r o u d . O n D e c e m b e r 1 0 , 2025, UNESCO added "Ital- ian cooking, between sustain- ability and bio-cultural diver- sity" to its Representative List of the Intangible Cul- tural Heritage of Human- ity, giving official recognition to our beloved culinary tradi- tion. The 2026 Week chose the recognition as its theme, I t a l i a n C u i s i n e a s UNESCO Heritage: Terri- tories and Supply Chains of Excellence, with particu- lar attention to the places where Italian food originates and the people who produce it. Of course, we know well that Italian cooking traveled well beyond those places: in Los Angeles, San Francisco and communities across the United States, generations of Italian families continued preparing food that came f r o m t o w n s a n d v i l l a g e s thousands of miles away, often adapting them to the ingredients they could find without entirely losing what they had learned at home. H o w e v e r , U N E S C O ' s r e c o g n i t i o n w a s n e v e r intended to settle the argu- ments Italians have about food, and we know well there are plenty of those; it did not establish a definitive recipe for ragù, decide how tortelli- ni should be made, or declare one version of parmigiana superior to another. Instead, the inscription acknowledges the knowledge and every- day practices that devel- oped around Italian cooking: choosing ingredients, prepar- ing them by hand, making good use of what is available, avoiding waste and, perhaps most importantly, sharing food with others. It also recognizes how that knowl- edge is transmitted, through f a m i l i e s a n d e d u c a t i o n a l institutions, through recipes exchanged and meals pre- pared together, and through g r a n d p a r e n t s t e a c h i n g grandchildren the dishes they learned when they were young. These traditions sur- vived because people contin- ued practicing them, includ- ing the millions of Italians who left their country and took their cooking habits with them. Los Angeles offers an interesting example of how Italian food traditions devel- oped far from home, and the city's program for the Week, running from November 16 to 22, reflects it well. The cel- ebrations begin at the Ital- i a n C u l t u r a l I n s t i t u t e w i t h V e r d i ' s L a n d , a n e v e n i n g d e d i c a t e d t o Giuseppe Verdi and the t r a d i t i o n s o f E m i l i a - R o m a g n a , p a r t i c u l a r l y Parma; actor Joe Mantegna will lead a theatrical perfor- m a n c e c o m b i n i n g s t o r y - telling and music, followed b y a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f t h e region's food. The following day, the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles will host an event dedicated to the role women played in preserving Italian culinary traditions and passing them on to younger generations, while on November 18, the A c c a d e m i a I t a l i a n a della Cucina will meet at Barrique to discuss how Ital- ian gastronomy evolved in California; taken together, these events offer several perspectives on Italian cui- sine, and on the ways its tra- ditions survived and changed as Italians established lives in other countries. Indeed, there is plenty of history to draw on in Los A n g e l e s , w h e r e I t a l i a n s began settling even before California became a state in 1850. The Italian Ameri- can Museum's perma- nent exhibition documents the lives of immigrants – farmers, fishermen, wine- m a k e r s – m a n y o f w h o m brought skills that proved valuable to Southern Califor- nia's developing economy: w i n e p r o d u c t i o n , f o r instance, was a particularly p r o m i s i n g o c c u p a t i o n because the climate offered conditions familiar to people who had worked in Italian vineyards. Secondo Guasti, who emigrated from Asti in Piedmont, initially worked as a cook before establishing, in 1901, the Italian Vineyard Company, which, within two decades, grew into a massive estate in the Cucamonga Val- ley – spanning parts of mod- ern-day Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga – covering 5,000 contiguous acres. Guasti had a r r i v e d w i t h k n o w l e d g e acquired in Italy, but he put it to work on Californian land, eventually creating an enterprise on a scale that would have been difficult to imagine when he first left home. Something similar hap- p e n e d i n i m m i g r a n t k i t c h e n s , a l t h o u g h t h e changes were often less visi- ble. The Italians who arrived in America did not all cook alike, because Italian cuisine had always been profoundly From local roots to global recognition: Italian cuisine takes the UNESCO spotlight FRANCESCA BEZZONE NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS CONTINUED TO PAGE 6 Italian cooking traveled far beyond Italy, adapting to new places while remaining rooted in familiar ingredients and the pleasure of sharing a meal (Original image created for L'Italo-Americano with the assistance of AI)

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