Do you think it is possible to learn Italian and communicate with Italians without talking about Italian cuisine?

How is it possible to remove culinary vocabulary from the basic level lexicon or not to worry about the correct pronunciation of prosecco or pistacchio or schiacciata? And how would we do without the restaurant, market or bar topics in the textbooks?

Learning to use the imperative forms without a recipe for tiramisù is unthinkable. The same is for the readings about the true story of the pizza used to practise imperfetto and passato remoto tense. Finally… when your teacher asks you in the morning class: what did you do yesterday? Won’t you want to share with your colleagues your culinary experiences in the best restaurants in Florence?

As for me, I must confess that when my mother calls me on the phone (at least two or three times a week) she asks me what I have eaten and if I have eaten enough. When I book a hotel for my holiday I also, and above all, choose it according to the breakfast it offers and when I prepare my itinerary for a holiday I check the list of restaurants in the places I am going to visit.

Are all these behaviours Italian or do you do the same thing?

Italians not only like to eat, but many of us also like to cook and love to go to grocery or market shops to buy good, local, fresh and seasonal products. In Florence, you will find fresh food markets or fruit stalls in every neighbourhood. In the historic centre, the Sant’Ambrogio and the Central markets are the most popular. But even in Piazza Santo Spirito (where I buy fruit and vegetables) you’ll find a couple of highly recommended stalls almost every morning: only fresh produce and almost all of it local, with great seasonal variety: tomatoes, courgettes, apricots, peaches in summer, various types of cabbages, artichokes, oranges in winter.
And, of course, we Italians love to talk about cooking. If you have Italian friends, or want to have them in the future, you can’t fail to learn the vocabulary of Italian cuisine. Talking about cooking in Italian will help you to break the ice in a conversation, to share tastes and customs with your new friends and to create a more intimate relationship.

So we agree: learning the vocabulary of the cuisine, learning how to order in restaurants in Italy, knowing the recipes of Italian dishes is essential. It is perhaps even more so to explore regional Italian recipes, because Italian cuisine, despite the globalisation of trade and customs, still has a strong regional flavour. It is true that changes in society and lifestyles also manifest in the kitchen. To give an example, my diet is certainly different from that of my parents and grandparents: I have yoghurt with oatmeal for breakfast and at certain times I drink barley coffee instead of coffee. Heresy! An Italian calls a barley-based drink coffee. Of course, every now and then a good biscuit dipped in milk gives me great satisfaction. But milk, for me, can also be soya milk, a food unknown to my grandparents and my parents. That said, I believe that Italian cuisine remains intimately and proudly linked to local products.

Travelling from north to south Italy you will be amazed by the variety of Italian pasta, breads, vegetables, meat and fish dishes, desserts, wines and even beers. Craft beers produced in Italy are becoming an important market, and are delicious! You will probably also be surprised that we don’t all eat pasta every day, put tomato and chilli on every plate, or drink litres of wine or coffee. You may also be surprised to find vegetarian or vegan dishes readily available in many restaurants. Here in Tuscany, for example, vegetables and beans are key ingredients in most Tuscan regional recipes. Do you know ribollita, panzanella, pappa al pomodoro, tagliatelle with porcini mushrooms? Vegetarian dishes are easy to find in trattorias if you are in the right season.

Our students seem to be aware of this and there is a widespread demand among them to add cooking classes to the Italian course. That is why we have established relationships with the best cooking schools in the city and offer the courses ‘Italian and Cooking’ and ‘Italian through food and wine’. I recommend that you take a look at the pages of these two courses and keep them in mind during your stay in Florence. The Italian and cooking course allows you to attend the classic Italian group course in the mornings and to dedicate two afternoons a week for cooking lessons. The Italian through food and wine course, on the other hand, allows you to dedicate yourself to Italian cooking while perfecting your Italian through this passion. Cooking classes, wine and olive oil tastings and visits to the markets of Florence are included in this course and are the experiences around which the language class is also developed.

These are two schools we collaborate with and much appreciated by our students:
Giglio cooking
Chefactory

For more information, please contact us.