Blog Food Network

At an Italian/Cuban restaurant in New York, this eater prefers Mexican ceviche to the Cuban variety.

I returned to New York on Saturday evening with a certain restlessness and a hankering for the Village. Despite the higher prices of food in the area, J* and I made our way to the lower east side. We missed the last showing of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind at the almost too-cool-for-school KGB, so wandered over to a restaurant nearby called Candela, Candela. The joint is an interesting mixture of Cuban and Italian cuisine.

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Learning how to cook gnocchi, a favorite Italian food.

On this occasion the gnocchi were accompanied by a rich & delicious beef ragout, on the side a kraut Salat (white cabbage salad seasoned with fennel seeds). Totally delicious. There is no comparison between this light and tasty meal and the stones of stomach-ache gnocchi from the supermarket. I can't wait to try it again and am really thankful to 'Frau C" for sharing her secret with me.

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Everyone should live close to the CIA and enjoy their Italian food.

I am lucky enough to live about 5 miles from the Culinary Institute of America. They have 4 restaurants and a bakery open to the public; The Escoffier Room(French cuisine), The American Bounty(American fare), St. Andrews Café( a casual mix) , Risorante Caterina de' Medici (Italian cuisine) and the Apple Pie Bakery.

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Hard, but not impossible, to find good Italian food in Indiana.

My three daughters were born and raised in the state of Connecticut and are now in High School and College.The lifelong friends my husband and I have made here. "Real" Italian cuisine is beyond words in the state, being raised in Indiana, I had no idea what I had been missing until a move here.

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For good Italian food in New York, check out A Voce.

Although the menu is expensive, the atmosphere at A Voce is informal. The space is attractively decorated, and the swivel chairs are quite comfortable. But the tables are fairly close together, the noise level builds rapidly, and the serving staff gets a little stretched as the restaurant fills up. Andrew Carmellini’s upscale Italian cuisine is wonderful, but he hasn’t really provided the elegant stage on which it deserves to shine.

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Read more from this blogger: A Voce

The best pizza is Italian pizza.

Pizza is undoubtedly considered as one of the symbol of Italian cuisine and it is one of the most famous dishes worldwide, but not many people know that the traditional recipe dates back only to the 19th century. As actually Wikipedia explains us “the tomato - which is one the main ingredients for pizza - was brought to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century, it was believed by many Europeans to be poisonous (…). By the late 18th century, however, it was common for the poor of the area around Naples to add tomato to their yeast-based flat bread, and the dish gained in popularity. Pizza became a tourist attraction, and visitors to Naples ventured into the poorer areas of the city to try the local specialty.” The first pizzeria opened in Naples in 1830, but it was only in 1889 that the word pizza became an Italian word. In the summer of that year the Italian royal family was spending their holidays in the south of Italy. One day the Queen, Margherita of Savoy, heard by some noble ladies about the exquisiteness of this low-class dish and she asked to taste it. On that occasion a famous pizza-maker, Raffaele Esposito, baked in honour of the Queen a special pizza, made with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and basil: the pizza margherita.

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