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5 things Italy Segreta wants you to know about Italian food

26 Sep 2025

Fine Dining Lovers

Editorial Staff

Naughty sweets, tiramisu and Futurism: how much do you know about Italian food? Italy Segreta co-founder Marina Cacciapuoti reveals all

Fine Dining Lovers by S.Pellegrino has a deep respect for the rituals, rhythms and everyday beauty of Italian life. Just like Italy Segreta (‘Secret Italy’), the editorial platform celebrating the beauty of the Italian territory and culture. That’s why we’re collaborating with Italy Segrata in support of its latest print edition, ‘A Tavola’ (‘At the table’), which delves into the lesser-known recipes, dishes and ingredients of Italian cuisine.

It’s a collaboration that makes perfect sense: S.Pellegrino has long been part of the table – shining on lunch counters, poured at family meals, and served alongside the moments that define Italian hospitality.

To celebrate this partnership, we grabbed a minute with Italy Segreta co-founder Marina Cacciapuoti to discuss the common misconceptions and little known facts of Italy’s gastronomy. Here are five things Italy Segreta wants you to know about Italian food, in Cacciapuoti’s own words.

There’s no such thing as traditional Italian cuisine

What we think of as ‘classic Italian’ is really the product of centuries of cultural cross-pollination. Arab traders brought spices and pasta-drying techniques; the New World gave us tomatoes and corn; Phoenicians salted fish roe into bottarga; French and Catalan influences shaped regions like Piedmont and Sardinia. Italy’s genius lies in absorbing foreign ingredients and making them feel timelessly ‘Italian.’

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The osteria came first – and set the stage for everything else

Dating back to the 7th–8th centuries, the osteria began as a simple wine tavern where travellers brought their own food. Trattorie came later, adding full kitchens and the homestyle, nonna-driven recipes that defined regional cooking. Much later still, the ristorante – inspired by the French restaurant – introduced printed menus, professional chefs and dining as social theatre.

As Italy’s bourgeoisie grew, cafés evolved into ristoranti: places for social climbing and the pleasure of seeing and being seen. The word ristorante itself comes from the French restaurant, which in turn derives from the Latin ‘to refresh.’ The very first, opened in Paris in the late 1700s, served only ‘restorative’ soup. Piedmont, closest to France, soon followed; Turin’s Il Cambio, founded in 1765, is often cited as Italy’s first true ristorante, an elegant café transformed into a meeting place for society’s thinkers. Its menus went well beyond regional staples to feature ‘exotic’ creations and out-of-season fruit – luxuries the rising middle class enjoyed while sipping bottled wine instead of the old bulk varieties.

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Nuns created many of Italy’s naughtily-named sweets

A surprising number of pastries with cheeky shapes or suggestive names – breasts, buttocks and more – were first baked inside convent walls. For cloistered women, pastry-making was one of the few socially acceptable outlets for creativity, so some desserts carried a playful or even rebellious edge.

Think of minne di Sant’Agata, little domed cakes from Sicily shaped like a saint’s breasts, or sospiri, airy cream-filled pastries whose name literally means ‘sighs.’

Long before Christianity, Mediterranean fertility rites celebrated abundance with symbols like breasts and other body forms. Those images quietly survived; nuns adapted them into festive sweets, giving pagan motifs a new life in the Christian era.

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The origin of the name ‘tiramisu’

Tiramisu literally means ‘pick me up.’ Although tiramisu doesn't resemble a body part like some of the more risqué convent desserts, it still has sexual or erotic connotations

One legend holds that tiramisu was invented in a 19th-century brothel in Treviso. The story says the madam created it to serve her clients at the end of the night as a kind of ‘reinvigoration’ or aphrodisiac.

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Italy had the first world’s first Futurist restaurant

In 1931, the poet-agitator Filippo Tommaso Marinetti opened Turin’s Taverna del Santopalato, the world’s first Futurist restaurant, to rebel against Italy’s food traditions. Futurist cuisine banned pasta and turned meals into art performances – complete with edible ‘sculptures,’ unexpected textures and even sound or scent effects – proving that a century ago Italians were already experimenting with avant-garde dining.

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