From Italian Switzerland to the Eastern Adriatic

Culinary Cultures on the ‘Margins’ of Italianness

Abstract

This paper contributes to raising awareness about the existence of indigenous ‘Italian’ culinary expressions outside the borders of present-day Italy and beyond the so-called Italian diaspora. Thanks to the latter, the Italian language of food and Italian cuisine have spread all over the world. Recently, there has also been a development of food studies about former Italian colonies. However, this paper is not about Italy, the diaspora, or the former colonies, but the contexts of southern Switzerland, particularly the Grisons, and the eastern Adriatic coastal territories of Istria, Dalmatia, and Boka Kotorska. Some of these areas have never been part of political Italy; others were annexed to it, as provinces, during the twentieth century. In these areas, indigenous food cultures evolved in ways that resonate with the traditions found in Italy itself. In order to enrich the analysis of cultural expressions, photographic, ethnographic, and literary approaches have been used. The orality of the interviews helps enrich the data collected by other methods. That said, literature and interviews do not allow to visualize meaningful expressions such as dishes or symbols; a photograph, on the other hand, can evoke narratives.