10 Niche things I miss about Italy
A love letter to my country, but not the kind you would expect.
Before we begin, I’d like to clarify that this is in no way meant as a diss to my life in London. I love living there and I love the British people (heck, I even married one!). But as my third and final week of being back home-home comes to a close, I started reflecting on all the things I miss about my country and its culture. And no, I won’t be talking about the usual suspects like the weather, the slow pace of life and the fresh produce. All these cliches are true, and I do miss them, but no one wants to hear me go on a rant about how rainy London is… do you?
So I set out to create a list of niche & obscure facts of the Italian way of life that you might not be aware of. Will this list include edible things at various points? Of course, I am Italian after all. But not what you might expect.
I had a lot of fun writing this piece (it took a fair amount of time too), and my biggest hope is that you find it amusing. If nothing else, I hope it provides you with some unusual inspiration of things to look out for when you are next visiting this beautiful land.
1. All things Liquorice
When you think of quintessential Italian flavours, I am willing to bet anything that liquorice is not on top of your list. I don’t think it even makes the top ten. Yet Italians love liquorice – a fact that became all the more self-evident by experiencing how much, in comparison, the Brits dislike (or are at best indifferent to) this wonderful flavour. Licorice ice cream, in particular, has been my favourite flavour for as long as I can remember.
Growing up, my dad always used to keep a tin of small, potent liquorice candies in his car. I am not talking about the gummy sugary stuff. I am talking about tiny, rock-solid liquorice pebbles, no more than 5 square mm big. This stuff ain’t for the faint-hearted, nor the licorice indifferent. The most famous and ubiquitous brand producing these hardcore liquorice candies is a Calabrian company called Amarelli, which has been operating since 1731 and is responsible for some of the most typographically beautiful packaging there ever was (the type nerd in me is obsessed). I am yet to find a Gelateria in London that does Liquorice Gelato, so it is still one of the first things I buy upon returning to the motherland, no matter the season.
2. Cleaning Products
You may or may not know this, but Italians are, at heart, massive germophobes. Cleanliness is in our blood, a concept we have been fed in spoonfuls (or, in my personal case, shovels) from a very young age by generations and generations of mothers and grandmothers (the men, to be fair, are not much different). This obsession with hygiene is a trait that we very much share with the Japanese (a people who bring this concept to even greater heights – see my previous article on Japanese Cleanliness).
This collective obsession with cleanliness translates, in my modest experience and opinion, into superior cleaning products. Not only do they clean better, they smell better too. I am not here to discuss the eco credentials of such products (they are probably full to the brim with strong chemicals), but they do the job extremely well and they smell fantastic. I will admit I have indulged (twice!) in the madness of purchasing a very obscure, industrial brand of laundry detergent on Amazon Italy at an exorbitant price (shipped to the UK with ridiculous import taxes on top of that), after learning that that was the brand my mother’s draper of 20 years uses to wash her curtains and linens with. I can’t even describe how heavenly that stuff smells. But at a whopping £20 per tiny bottle, I had to come to terms with reality and find a suitable alternative in the UK (I quite like the Coastal scent of the British brand Norfolk).
3. Bidet
A topic that is very much cleaning-product-adjacent is the one of Bidets. An unmissable staple of every Italian household, the subject of bidets in the UK always seems to elicit looks that range from quizzical to dubious to downright derisory. The more curious amongst my non-Italian friends will start asking a series of questions on what exactly are the benefits, and how one uses it (most, in my experience, imagine one should sit on it as you would on a toilet, which FYI is not the right way around).
If you feel like you would rather not read about intimate personal hygiene, feel free to skip to no.4.
The range of uses is indeed varied: the most crude but fundamental use, I would say, is to freshen up your private bits after you have been to the loo; crucially, in case of a number two, you are meant to use the bidet after you have wiped yourself clean. This fact may seem obvious to many, but I have learned from experience it should not be taken for granted.
Italians will also use the bidet to quickly wash their feet or have a full-on foot bath (with sea salt, which is believed to aid all sorts of ailments). We leave stained delicate garments such as underwear to soak overnight, instead of using the basin or a plastic tub. Bidets also provide excellent support when cutting your toenails or shaving your legs (sitting on the closed-seat toilet, if, as they should be, they are placed next to each other). And finally, bidets can even function as mini baths for newborns and babies (after being thoroughly sanitised, of course). All things considered, I hope you can see now that bidets are not only useful, but necessary in any gentile society.
Over the course of our 8-year relationship, I managed to sway my English husband from bidet-skeptic to number one bidet-enthusiast. Our home in London is endowed with two bidets, one in each bathroom, because my father made it perfectly clear he would not come to stay with us if the guest bathroom didn’t have a bidet too. We are well covered there.
So why do Bidets make the list of things I miss about Italy? Because, boy do I dearly miss them when we are away on a Staycation! To make up for the inconvenience, I managed to find a sub-ideal but nonetheless effective solution: a portable bidet bottle. This may not be the kind of product you (or I) thought I’d be championing on this platform, but let’s be honest, this lil thing saved me on countless trips. Curiously, this bottle is marketed as a “postpartum care” solution. I beg to strongly disagree. I think women should be entitled to have their perineum fresh and intact at the same time, thank you very much.
4. Oki
I have mentioned in my latest post how I have a less-than-ideal relationship with the British National Healthcare System. I won’t open a can of worms and go into details (suffice to say I think women, to name one, should be able to see their gynaecologist without having the gate kept by over-worked GPs). So yes, I miss the Italian healthcare system, but what I absolutely cannot do without is this lifesaver of an over-the-counter painkiller: meet Oki. As someone who has always suffered from an incredibly painful period (to the point of fainting), this stuff truly is gold dust. Every trip to Italy includes a trip to the pharmacy, with the goal of stashing as much Oki as it is legally possible and bringing it back to the UK. It is so effective, that I managed to hook on it not just my husband, but my old boss too (not in a Pablo Escobar kind of way, let me be very clear about that). Simply put, once you try Oki there is no going back to the common paracetamol.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. Please be sensible and seek medical advice if in doubt.
5. Free bread in restaurants
I recently saw a viral video on Instagram from a nutritionist I follow. In the video, she explained how restaurants feed you bread at the start of the meal to induce a glucose spike in your body, which will inevitably result in a sugar crash after 90 minutes, about which time the waiter comes back to tempt you with the dessert menu. Rather than lingering on this incredibly cunning worldwide restaurant conspiracy, my first thought was: of course she is French.
In most European countries, in fact, being served bread at the start of the meal is a thing to be expected at a restaurant. Yes – trendy restaurants in London will also serve you bread (the warm seaweed sourdough at Perilla in particular is my absolute favourite), but my point is, in Italy all the bready stuff is complimentary, which is fantastic news for two reasons: first, obviously, it’s free. But secondly (and most importantly), as it’s part of the service, the waiter will bring it to you unprompted, and pronto, without you having to order and wait for it. A fact that comes in particularly handy for those of us who find ourselves ravenous before a meal.
My dad, ever the demanding customer, has taught me to judge the standard of a restaurant by the quality of its bread: the nicer the restaurant, the fresher and more varied the bread selection. In posher restaurants, you’ll typically find a mix of mini loaves with different textures and flavours, containing olives, hazelnuts, seeds, tomato…the list goes on.
Most mid-range restaurants’ bread baskets will offer a mix of bread and breadsticks. You will commonly find Bibanesi (aka the kings of the breadstick world) – a brand I have loved with a passion ever since I can remember. So much so, that for almost a decade I would make room in my very tiny, Ryainair-compatible suitcase in order to transfer these precious goods back home. Until one glorious day, the UK online grocery shop Ocado started to sell them. I have been enjoying affordable, easy-to-procure Bibanesi for two or three happy years. Sadly Ocado has since decided to no longer import them, so I thought I’d try to raise awareness on the matter, in an attempt to bring the demand back.
6. Japanese cartoons on TV
For some obscure reason unbeknown to me, Japanese manga are absolutely huge in Italy, and they have been huge for quite some time. So much so, that generations of Italians grew up watching manga on television (my eldest sister, who is squarely Gen X and 10 years older than me, watched many of the same cartoons I grew up with). I am not talking about some obscure satellite channel. I am talking about prime time on national TV, every afternoon between 3 and 5 pm. Most of these cartoons were about the lives and romances of Japanese teenagers. Some of them were sports-based (probably the most famous, Holly e Benji, revolved around football). Some of them had an element of magic (Terry e Meggy was about two identical twins that could teleport and communicate telepathically with each other). My favourite, Piccoli Problemi di Cuore (Marmalade Boy in the original title) was about two step-siblings falling in love (a storyline that didn’t seem at all problematic back in the nineties). In hindsight, the root of my love for Japan and its culture might have stemmed from a childhood spent watching immaculate bento boxes being prepared as the ultimate act of love declaration from one timid Japanese teenager to another. They will always hold a sense of nostalgia, and I wish they were as readily available in the UK as they are in Italy!
7. Old Boys (and girls) chilling in the Piazza
Speaking of nostalgia, nothing warms my heart more than the sight of groups of old pals gathering in an Italian square, chatting away into the evening. This aspect of the Italian dolce vita is pretty ubiquitous around the country, but it is more evident especially in the south, where older people can be spotted sitting in groups, at the local bar as well as outside their homes, watching life go by. Old boys, as Joe calls them, watching football together. Old girls sitting in a circle, radio turned on, sharing the latest gossip of the town.
I find this one of the most wholesome aspects of my culture, something I am afraid is getting lost with the younger generations. Is there anything sweeter than a group of mates that have known each other their whole life, who can still bear to socialise every day and who still enjoy each others’ company?
8. Aperitivo
Ok, Aperitivo as a concept is not exactly niche, granted. Essays much more authoritative than this one have been written about the central role squares play in Italian culture, and how Aperitivo is the true, beating heart of Italian social life. Simply put, a Piazza is to Italians what Pubs are to the Brits, and Spritz in this analogy replaces the Pint. The main difference is, whereas a pint is usually enjoyed on an empty stomach (I’ve observed for over a decade now, perplexed, my British colleagues and friends downing pint after pint well past dinner time, without so much as a pack of crisps in their bellies), Aperitivo always, always comes with the necessary food trimmings. Depending on where in Italy you find yourself, the trimmings can transform into full-blown buffets (the Milanese are famous for their particularly generous “Happy Hour”), but at the very least you can expect the bar waiter to bring you (again, unprompted) a complementary bowl of crisps and salted peanuts, perhaps some olives if you are lucky.
Crucially, aperitivo does not need to be necessarily alcoholic – a fact that a tee-total like me finds very liberating. It would be perfectly socially acceptable to order, say, a Crodino or (my personal poison of choice) a Coke with Lemon and Ice.
Which brings me to my next, much nicher point.
9. Italian Coca Cola
I wouldn’t consider myself a big soda drinker – in fact I never drink any sugary sodas of any kind (does Kombucha count?). But, as the old saying goes, there is a time and place for everything, and that time is Aperitivo and the place is Italy.
It took me a while to realise that Coke just doesn’t taste the same in the UK. It is a lot sweeter, and flatter too. I have since discovered that Coca-Cola tweak their recipe in each country to adapt to that specific population’s palate. So if you are ever on holiday in Italy (and you like fizzy drinks), try having Coca-Cola and tell me what you think. And make sure to get it from the glass bottle if you can – it always tastes better than the canned version!
10. Tramezzini
Last, but most certainly not least, we have Tramezzini – aka the apotheosis of Venetian snacks. A naive and untrained eye might mistake these triangular sources of bliss and happiness for simple sandwiches. Here in Veneto, where they originate, they are an art form.
The first thing that differentiates a tramezzino from a mere sandwich is the type of bread, which is a) the whitest b) the softest and most importantly c) crustless. But the main point of differentiation is doubtlessly the filling-to-bread ratio, with the filling being so ridiculously overbearing that you could say a Tramezzino looks like a Sandwich, but pregnant.
The variety of fillings is also a distinctive feature: any respectable bar in Veneto will have anything between 10 to 20 flavours. So with all these options, which flavour should you go for? I’m so glad you asked.
The best Tramezzino is, and will always be, Tonno e cipolline – tuna, mayo and baby pickled onions. Now, I know this is quite niche (I haven’t called this list niche for nothing), but trust me on this one and you won’t be sorry.
Hope you enjoyed this article. If you did, please leave me a comment and let me know what you’d be most curious to try!
Hello! Such an enjoyable read! I didn’t realise the similarities of cultures with respect to cleanliness and bidets between Italians and the Islamic world!!! We have always had a bidet growing up (in Canada!) but I was surprised that it was seen as so foreign when I moved to the UK. This handheld bidet is life changing though! Thank you!! Also the bit about Coca Cola - as an avid fan who can and has won blinded taste tests - Mexican Coke and Italian Coke as well as Coke in South Asia are far superior then North American or British versions and also, it makes a huge difference that it be enjoyed via a chilled glass bottle :)
Funny to read this as a) I have never used a bidet and defo thought you were supposed to sit on them the same way as the loo and b) I always say I’m surprised bidets still exist since no one uses them. I clearly haven’t met enough Italians 😂