Italians and Food comprises nine chapters on the relevance of Italian food culture within national borders and in the global context. In her introduction, the editor provides an excellent theoretical framework to the understanding of ‘Italianicity’, Italian food practices and culture, in the global and national food contexts. All the chapters in the volume deal with particular aspects of this central topic.

The book opens with a very topical chapter by Fabio Parasecoli that addresses the reasons for the international popularity of Italian food in the contemporary world. Parasecoli looks at how tradition and authenticity have impacted on the transformation of the concept of Italian food from a symbol of immigrant destitution at the beginning of the twentieth century in America, to the sophisticated and desirable image it projects today. Tradition is seen in terms of a cultural dialogue between present and past, determined by the material cultures and practices of a social group; authenticity is associated with both artisan skills and simplicity. Tradition and authenticity have acquired crucial importance in the globalised world as a form of resistance to the ‘threat to local uniqueness’ (p. 22). For Parasecoli, the worldwide success of Italian cuisine is due to concomitant factors: the image of relaxed family life, sense of community and emotional connectedness have been coopted by media communication strategies which, both in Italy and the United States, have embraced the discourse of tradition and authenticity to consolidate the position of Italian cuisine in the world.

Simone Cinotto, by analysing in particular Italian migration to the United States, but also to Belgium, Germany, Argentina, and Australia, takes us on a fascinating journey that investigates the reasons why, in the Italian diaspora, food represented a favourite code of identity expression and formation. The focus of his research is migrants as consumers, and their desire for social improvement as citizens of a new country. For this reason, he bases his study on seven broad concepts that illustrate the historical development of Italian diasporic identities through food. The first is the invention of an Italian identity when, towards the end of the nineteenth century, immigrants to the US encountered the food traditions of other Italian regions, which helped them to create what others saw as ‘Italian cuisine’, a concept that did not exist in Italy at the time. Later, in the first decades of the twentieth century, speciality Italian food that Italian immigrant families were able to access through newly established import businesses and a well-established home food culture allowed Italian families of modest means to enjoy the satisfactory feeling of having improved their social condition. Thanks to the traditions of street parties and food stalls, immigrant districts were transformed from urban enclaves into a new ‘multisensual landscape’ (p. 56). Food import businesses and later the establishment of American companies producing Italian food using American ingredients, together with the role that Italian restaurants played in consolidating an image of Italian food as exotic and pleasurable, all contributed, in Cinotto's analysis, to the formation of a successful Italian immigrant identity.

Moving to the analysis of food culture in contemporary Italy, Chiara Rabbiosi's chapter looks at how tourism in Rimini and its surrounding area has created multiple meanings for Italianicity. Considering tourism as worthy of analysis beyond just economics, Rabbiosi offers examples of how, in its intersection with food, tourism establishes numerous levels of Italianicity, in addition to the local, the national, and the global. Carole Counihan analyses the effectiveness and limits of Slow Food's activism by focusing on ethnographic fieldwork in Tuscany and Sardinia. By bringing together research carried out throughout her whole career, Counihan argues that food activism can be understood through its link to food consumption. Hence, borrowing De Certeau's concept of tactics, that is consumers’ ‘resistance to hegemonic practices and ideologies’ (p. 104) through their own redefinition of consumption, she demonstrates how commensality, taste and locality are the three elements characterising activism in the Slow Food chapters she investigated. Despite the limits of Slow Food in providing cross-cultural and cross-class experience, Counihan concludes with a positive evaluation of its tactics: bringing people together through meals and taste education is, in her view, a first step towards food democracy. Other forms of conviviality are examined in the chapter by Federica Davolio and Roberta Sassatelli. In their empirical research collating 400 hours of interviews, they study how hospitality is experienced at dinner parties by northern Italian middle-class families.

In his insightful chapter, Lorenzo Domaneschi discusses Italianicity focusing on the role of regional commercial cooks (rather than renowned chefs). Through his ethnographic research in Liguria, Domaneschi demonstrates that for commercial cooks, the meaning of authenticity and simplicity is to be found in their personal experience, well-rooted in the territory, and in their knowledge of local ingredients. The cooks are seen as ‘embodied cultural capital’, in Bourdieu's terms, able to translate the knowledge of the territory and their personal experience into regional gastronomic authenticity. In the following chapter, Elisa Arfini and Roberta Sassatelli analyse the local seal of quality DegustiBo, created by the province of Bologna, to discover that, for producers, emotion, passion and creativity rather than territorial boundaries constitute the idea of locality. The volume concludes with Agnese Portincasa's study of the construction of Italian culinary identity through cookbooks, and Sebastiano Benasso and Luisa Stagi's discussion of gastro-nationalism in the recent social media debate on pasta alla carbonara.

Italians and Food provides stimulating points of reflection on the relevance of Italianicity at local, national, and global levels – and on all their multiple intersections. The volume is enriched by Donna Gabaccia's foreword and Massimo Montanari's afterword that are in themselves two insightful pieces for the contextualisation of local, national and global dynamics. To this reviewer, some chapters, in particular the essays by Cinotto and Domaneschi, stand out in terms of critical depth and acumen; as a whole, Italians and Food certainly makes a significant addition to the interdisciplinary discussion of Italian food studies.