"F.O.A.D." wrote:
On 7/15/13 11:43 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 15 Jul 2013 08:00:07 -0400, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

This article more or less rings true:

http://tinyurl.com/ku5tae4

Having grown up in the epicenter of the pizza belt, I'm usually
disappointed by the pizza I've encountered outside of it. In all the
years I've lived in the Washington, D.C., area, I've only encountered
two restaurants that make pizza that even resembles the good stuff from
New Haven. And there was one pizza joint in NE Florida that had
satisfactory pizza...and it turns out the owner and chef was from
Providence.

I feel the same about Italian food in general.

Once you have had Italian food from the New York area, nothing else
seems to compare.
Occasionally you will find a transplant who brought the skill with
them but it is rare.
I did find a good Italian restaurant on the south end of Clearwater
Beach at the end of a strip mall right before you go over the bridge
but I am not sure if they are still there.



My guess is that most of the Italians who came to this country at the
beginning of the 20th Century landed in the northeast and that most of
them stayed there. Those who started restaurants, groceries, bakeries, et
cetera, and survived established a family business that their children
and grandchildren inherited. There are still some thriving Italian
eateries in the New Haven area that were started nearly 100 years ago,
and are still run by the descendants of the founders.

Virtually all the Italian ancestry folk I know in the Washington, D.C.,
area, were labor union officials who came down here from New England, New
York, and New Jersey. A lot of my Irish ancestry union buddies, on the
other hand, were from families that settled in the northeast, but also in
places like Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, all over.

There's plenty of crappy pizza throughout the United States. Domino's,
Papa John's, and a half dozen other huge chain places. Blech.

Depends on the style of Italian food. Here in Calif, there were two
different Italian cultures that arrived. The Genoese that made up a lot of
the fishermen, and then my wife's background of Northern Italian / Swiss
Italian. Two different food styles. A lot more white sauces from the
North. The Swiss Italian were the dairymen plus some of the winemakers.