food and desserts, Italy vs Canada

After living in Italy almost 2 years now, I have started to notice some patterns in food habits amongst Italians that are completely different from Canadians. Per example, a restaurant or café serving lunch or any other meal for that matter will always offers several vegetables or contorni with the main course which is called a Secundi or Second course.
Lunch is always a primi Pasta and secundi a meat.
If you are having a serious meal and want to make it your main meal of the day, for any Italian it will be lunch not dinner
nor breakfast. It is the custom in Italy to close schools, shops and work places at 13:00 for lunch and re-open at 16:00, this break offers the opportunity for all to have a leisurely lunch.

The very North American idea that a big breakfast is very important is totally unknown here. Breakfast here is usually a small coffee two gulps like an expresso and a cornetto which is a croissant filled with chocolate or cream, you can have a cappucino or caffe latte which is the size of a cup 4 gulps there are no mugs or super sized mugs like you see all too often in North America at Starbucks and of course we are blessed with no Starbucks or Tim Horton's.

Lunch offers a wide range of salads fixed for you as you simply ask the waiter to prepare one for you, no such thing as self-service. Dressing, the only one available is olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Lots of people like a salad with tuna in it, it seems to be the only meat you can actually have in a salad. Sometimes once a week you will find a pre-prepared chicken salad with shredded chicken and salad nothing else, no creamy dressings or stuff with mayonnaise. If you prefer you can also choose from the hot dishes, again at least 4 green vegetables, spinach is always on the menu, chicory, green beans, and roasted potatoes with rosemary. Certain days of the week will be all fish, Friday and Wednesday. Menus also offer at least 4 different types of pastas, and in winter a soup with beans and vegetables or leafy greens. If it is a meat day then paper slices of rare roast beef, roast chicken usually a leg or veal or pork scaloppine, never breaded always in a gravy.

Everyone drinks water frizzante ( with gas) for digestion sake. No soft drinks like coke or coffee or milk. Mineral water is the only acceptable drink, wine maybe a glass, but no more.

Sunday lunch is the big meal with friends and family, with an antipasto of salami and prosciutto and a soft cheese a few roasted vegetables usually eggplant, zucchini, porcini mushrooms and olives. Then a pasta dish like a lasagna or a spaghetti with seafood or clams, then a meat dish and being Sunday a good bottle of wine. If this looks like a lot of food, it should be remembered that portions are small never large or over sized. On Sunday lunch will be from 13:30 to 15:30

Now lunch on any day is always served at 13:00 or 13:30 never before that time, restaurants are not open. Same with dinner never before 20:30 at night, only again tourists will have dinner at 6pm or 7pm and will get the lunch left over in restaurants located in touristic spot of town and the prices will be high and the food mediocre.

The evening dishes on the menu are never ready before 20:00 hrs. Many people are not aware of this fact but it is true. Even children are use from an early age to have meals at 13:30 after school recess and in the evening at home with their parents around the table at 20:00 or a little later, even as late as 21:00 on weekends. The whole concept of selling food on the run or fast food for families who don't have time to sit for a meal is unknown here. Meals are social events and one cannot hurry such a thing, it would be rude and a sign of not being civilized.

Dinner at night can also be a delightful meal but it will not be a big meal like lunch. Often people may have only one dish or two and skip the pasta dish all together. At the end of the meal there may be dessert but if so then it will be fresh fruits, strawberry with a zest of lemon juice or ananas fresh from the fruit itself and an expresso. Restaurants do not offer the wide range of heavy creamy desserts we see in Canada. There may be tiramisu or a crostini which is usually a biscuit like dough with a jam of fruit on top. But again it seems tourists will go for that but not the locals.

Restaurants do not offer kids meals, or menus with items just for kids like a hamburger or chicken fingers or french fries, again it flies against the principal that children should be taught young how to behave at table and like the same foods as adults so they can be more sociable. Everyone gets into the act of teaching them about eating vegetables of all kinds and sample other foods and eat in moderation. Drink plenty of mineral water with meals, you will not see an Italian mother offer her kids a coke or milk with a meal, more likely a little wine mixed with lots of water.

This way children are not fat and do not seem to have the skin problems so frequent in our society. They also appear more calm.
As an example during our trip to Trieste on the Adriatic, we were having lunch in a Café and noticed 2 mothers with 5 kids come for lunch, the children were between 5 and 12 years old. Moms ordered food for them and to my surprise, I saw them eat green vegetables and veal scalopini and roast chicken with rosemary, to drink mineral water. They were all well behaved and stayed at the table for the whole meal. I was just fascinated to see the 2 mothers able to have a conversation and enjoy their meals with the kids and no fuss. I simply could not imagine the same thing in North America.