Is Italy Ready for an American Revolution?

Five Italian restaurant critics looked dubiously at the plates before them. Each held a small corn tamale with green chile salsa and an eggshell stuffed with spicy shrimp egg foo yong with ginger and shiitake mushrooms. Three wavy strips of toasted blue corn tortilla bristled from the scrambled eggs.

“Is this edible?” asked one diner, pointing to the blue corn.

Another took an exploratory bite of the tamale. “Ah, no,” he said, shaking his head. “These flavors are too aggressive for an antipasto. It kills the palate for the rest of the meal.” The others at the table nodded agreement.

Then they finished off every bite.

Even in free-wheeling Los Angeles, chef John Sedlar’s “Chino-Latino” appetizer from his restaurant Bikini raises a few eyebrows. But here at Italy’s prestigious gastronomic festival, Saperi e Sapori (Knowing and Tasting), in a small town near Bologna in the culinary heart of Italy, it seemed almost revolutionary--and that was the idea.

In years past, the festival has showcased such top European chefs as Alain Senderens, Gualtiero Marchesi, Roger Verge, Gianfranco Vissani and Heinz Winckler. This year, for the first time, five American chefs--Sedlar, Mark Miller (Santa Fe’s Coyote Cafe and Washington’s Red Sage), Susan Regis (Biba in Boston), Hans Rockenwagner (Southern California’s Rockenwagner, Fama and Rox) and Susan Spicer (Bayona in New Orleans)--were invited to introduce modern American cooking to a skeptical audience of 120 Italian journalists, restaurant critics, restaurateurs and other food-business professionals.

“Frankly, I had a lot of prejudices about American cooking,” said Igles Corelli, founder of the festival and chef of the Michelin-starred Trigabolo restaurant in the town of Argenta. “But when I visited the States, I tasted some extraordinary dishes and was impressed by the flow of fresh ideas. It was a risk to bring the Americans here, because many Europeans share the prejudices I had, but I wanted to widen horizons.”

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As popular as Italian food is in the United States, la cucina statiunitense (American cooking) is virtually an unknown quantity in Italy. In Italy, a restaurant is a curiosity even when it serves food from a different region, let alone a different country. I’ve seen Italian friends arriving for a vacation in Los Angeles with a suitcase full of pasta, just in case.

Indeed, Italians like Italian food best. Just look at “Veronelli U. S. A.,” a guidebook to American restaurants published by Luigi Veronelli, one of Italy’s most distinguished food critics. In the chapter on Santa Monica, where some of the most accomplished chefs in America hang their varied culinary shingles, only Italian restaurants are listed. In the chapter on Manhattan, home of such gold-plated temples of gastronomy as Bouley, Le Cirque, the Four Seasons and Lutece, the only restaurants Signor Veronelli thought worth recommending are--you guessed it--Italian.

So the American delegation to Argenta embraced its role with missionary fervor. “Americans used to go to Europe to learn, but now we’re more educated,” said Miller. “We’ve done a lot of traveling and learning. If anything, there need to be more American chefs cooking in Europe and looking at Europe as a market for American ideas.”

The first hurdle was putting together a menu. With advice from Italian restaurateur Mauro Vincenti, owner of Rex Il Ristorante in Los Angeles, the chefs settled on a pastiche of quasi-regional specialties. Sedlar, influenced by the diverse ethnic groups of Los Angeles, devised his hybrid starter. Spicer’s Creole contribution was a subtle gumbo of oysters and greens, while Regis offered a medley of New England seafood--a garlicky brandade of New England cod wrapped in a crisp potato crust, served with sauteed cod cheeks and roasted, cracked Maine crab.

The menu then hopscotched to the Southwest, with Miller’s rabbit loin wrapped in wild boar bacon, served with a pesto of poblano chiles, cilantro and pumpkin seeds, and a green chile and apple chutney. Finally, German-born and European-trained Hans Rockenwagner found himself carrying the banner of Dixie, preparing black bottom pie with caramel-bourbon sauce. Rockenwagner added a comment on American cultural imperialism by serving Coca-Cola ice cream on the side.

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Every dish required ingredients that are not exactly staples at the supermercato , so the chefs arrived loaded with supplies. Spicer schlepped two gallons of shucked Louisiana oysters and four gallons--frozen, vacuum-packed--of what she called “gumbo helper,” a mixture of typical Southern produce like mustard greens, collard greens and that gumbo necessity, okra. “I think getting okra in Italy would have been tricky,” she said.

Sedlar tucked 15 pounds of pozole corn into his suitcase and a pile of red Santa Fe corn husks specially grown for the occasion. In Miller’s luggage were bacon from Broken Arrow Ranch in the Texas hill country and fire-roasted poblano chiles, while Rockenwagner was burdened with gingersnap crumbs and pecans.

After some preparation the day before, work began in earnest the morning of the day the dinner was scheduled. “This is cooking at a furious pace,” observed Sedlar as he stirred the bubbling pozole . The kitchen, a metal-roofed temporary structure attached to the back of the medieval convent where the Saperi e Sapori meals were held, quickly became stifling in the warm sun, but the chefs seemed impervious to the heat.

In mid-afternoon, as the preparations were in full swing, the temperature dropped suddenly, the sky darkened and wind began whipping through the door-less entrances to the kitchen. A few scattered raindrops fell, and then a deluge of biblical proportions began, drumming a deafening tattoo on the metal roof. Water began dripping through the makeshift roof, spraying through the doorways, coursing in sheets down the walls, splattering off the red-hot stoves. It was raining, no, pouring, in the kitchen.

First came a mad dash to protect the food from the water, stashing cooked food under tables, covering stock pots and open containers. The chefs and their helpers were soon soaked to the skin. Then someone started to sing, “I’m cooking in the rain,” and almost simultaneously, the crew started to laugh. They roared, they doubled over.

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Rockenwagner grabbed his video camera and recorded the scene. Conference organizer Igles Corelli, also drenched, stood in the middle of the kitchen, watching the crazy Americans and shaking his head in disbelief. “We’ve been doing this festival for five years,” he said, muttering a stream of nasty words in Italian. “It’s never rained. Never.”

The rain ended, the chefs dried off and preparations continued at full tilt until dinner began, at almost 10 p.m. Italian reaction to the wide-ranging menu mixed curiosity about ingredients and flavors with confusion--and some approval. Spicer’s oyster gumbo was admired, but several Italians, accustomed to eating dishes that change with the seasons, seemed surprised that such a thick, hearty soup would be served during warm weather.

Renato Fiorentini, a columnist for Bar Giornale, Italy’s largest restaurant trade journal, has the enviable job of writing only about European restaurants with Michelin stars. He proved a hard sell. “From a chef we expect some kind of intervention with the ingredients,” he commented about the first two courses. “What we have eaten so far is nothing more than I would expect from a highly competent housewife.” Graziano Pozzetto, a contributor to many culinary magazines and the Veronelli guides, was perplexed by the several varieties of fish served together in Regis’ dish. Nevertheless, he cleaned his plate.

The last two courses really rang Fiorentini’s chimes. Of Mark Miller’s rabbit loin, he enthused, “The way this is cooked, so moist and tender--it’s a masterpiece.” Compared to light Italian desserts or simply fresh fruit for dessert, the black-bottom pie seemed too heavy to some to follow such a meal. Fiorentini agreed, but when he took a bite of the Coca-Cola ice cream, he pronounced it “Ottimo” (excellent).

Also attending was one of Italy’s most notoriously fussy food critics, Luigi Cremona of L’Espresso, a weekly news magazine. Warned beforehand that Cremona, who is as slender as a stick of spaghetti, “doesn’t eat, he just tastes,” American observers were surprised to see him devour a healthy portion of each substantial course. Though he stopped short at the creamy dessert, he was persuaded to taste the caramel-bourbon sauce and proceeded to scrape every drop of it off his plate with a spoon.

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The American meal was held the first night of the festival; the next four evenings featured European chefs, especially Italians. By the time the event was over, many festival-goers agreed that la cucina statiunitense had been the most interesting and provocative of all.

“No one was indifferent to the food they tasted,” reflected Corelli. “Many were surprised by the mastery of these chefs, which was apparently unexpected in people coming from a country mostly known in Europe for hamburgers and Coca-Cola. Even those who didn’t fully appreciate what they ate acknowledged a great deal of skill and creativity.”

Added Pozzetto, a passionate lover of food and wine who has never been to the United States: “With this meal, we’ve taken a splendid journey through America, a journey of new impressions and new ideas.”