In Italy, they add work and life on to food and wine.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think people in Italy live their lives better than we do. It's an older country, and they've learned to celebrate dinner and lunch, whereas we sort of eat as quickly as we can to get through it.
Even more importantly, it's wine, food and the arts. Incorporating those three enhances the quality of life.
I love the simplicity, the ingredients, the culture, the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did, using fresh ingredients and what is available in season.
I always knew that food and wine were vital, with my mother being Italian and a good cook.
The Italians always made good wine, but you had the impression they were friendly guys in straw hats running family vineyards with slaves or something so that the vino was never more than ten bucks a bottle.
In Italy it's full-on stardom when you're a cyclist - eating in restaurants for free, it's great.
If you go back to the Greeks and Romans, they talk about all three - wine, food, and art - as a way of enhancing life.
Italy in the first years got food, for the first year or the first periods got food. Then we got raw materials and then we got tool machines, let's say, instruments for working.
If you stop for lunch elsewhere in the world, you tend to eat a sandwich, and a bad one. Italy is unique for the style of life. I think everyone envies it a bit.
Italians allow anything in their cooking.