[lucaspiller]

This is the big issue with 'defining' pizza and many other Italian dishes - Italians themselves can't decide how it should be and love to debate these things over and over (usually while eating food)!

Carbonara is another highly debated dish - here in Roma (where it is was supposedly born ~50 years ago) some people insist you only need egg, where as others insist you need egg and cheese (and then there is the debate over what cheese). I've heard some restaurants stopped serving the dish to prevent heated arguments with their customers.

Even the word for bags in a supermarket can't be agreed on. Here we use "buste", where as in the north they use "sacchetto". Our word there means envelope, so obviously you will get a funny look if you ask for three envelopes when paying for your groceries (the joke is on us though, we use that word for envelope too :P).

Further reading:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/02/origins-history-of-roman-...

[toothbrush]

> Even the word for bags in a supermarket can't be agreed on. Here we use "buste", where as in the north they use "sacchetto". Our word there means envelope, so obviously you will get a funny look if you ask for three envelopes when paying for your groceries (the joke is on us though, we use that word for envelope too :P).

Ha, that reminds me of sac in the north of France versus poche (the word northerners would use for the thing in their trousers) as used in the south(-west?) to designate a plastic bag in a supermarket...

[switch007]

I am slightly biased being part Italian, but we should celebrate diversity. Italy was unified only in 1860 – the area was various republics/city-states/etc prior to that. I love the regional variations of dishes. I love the Italian people's passion for food.