Displiceo, amice… we have ruined your linguine

Imported cuisines have been adapted to local tastes or altered due to constraints on availability of key ingredients

Chances are the Peking Duck you have in San Francisco’s China Town will taste quite different from the Peking Duck you will come across in Lahore. Most assuredly, the Tom Yum Goong soup served in Paris will vary in taste from that available in Johannesburg. Likewise, the Spaghetti Bolognese you may have tried in a trattoria in London will not be similar to that you may order in Buenos Aires.

Another thing for sure is that none of these dishes mentioned would necessarily taste like what they would do in their home countries.

All this is primarily the result of imported cuisines being adapted to local tastes and/or being altered due to constraints on availability of key ingredients.

We in Pakistan, however, have taken things to new extremes. I, for one, have noticed that over the years the average level of chillies and hot spices in our food has risen more alarmingly than the sea level has risen because of global warming.

At times, one cannot even distinguish between the tastes of two different dishes as the spice level is all that the taste buds are able to process. One now needs to be placed strategically by a fire hydrant before one can think of eating in some restaurants (or homes).

This phenomenon of spicing up food has naturally spilled over into the imported cuisines we are supposed to enjoy in restaurants; no more is this travesty more pronounced than in the self-styled Italian restaurants or Italian entrees; you order from the menu what is labelled as authentic Italian-style pasta and what your palate tastes is a dish spicier than an authentic South Indian vindaloo! If you complain the waiter takes affront as if you had taken a peek at his sister bathing! The chef, if he has the time to take his head out of the next couple of fiery poisons he is concocting, will look you up and down with a type of disdain a Manhattan socialite reserves for a Walmart cashier.

Explain to them that as somebody who has been fortunate enough to taste most types of pastas around the world and knows that an Italian grandmother would plunge headfirst from the top of the Leaning Tower in Pisa before making something like this for her darlings and you are told “this is how we make it here, sir.” Fine, I have no issue with that but at least do not label it what it is not.

Go ahead, call it Spaghetti ala Allah Ditta or Clifton Style Ravioli but please do not insult the food by naming it what it does not even remotely resemble or taste in its home country!

So, to all you Italians whose pastas we have made hotter than the spurts of Mount Vesuvius sorry for ruining your linguine!

Published in The Express Tribune, April 2^nd, 2015.

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