WHEN I TOLD PEOPLE I WAS GOING TO CALABRIA, I was usually met with blank looks. I would staunch the awkwardness with five words: “The toe of the boot.” It’s the easiest way to explain where I was going—the southwestern-most slice of Italy—but explaining why is harder. In my case, I was headed to speak at NanoGagliato, a nanomedical conference in the tiny, mountainous town of Gagliato, located so to speak, in the instep of the boot. But much of the time, medicine played third or fourth fiddle to food. 

The thing that many Americans don’t realize is that Italian-American culture is largely Calabrese culture. The bulk of the five million Italians who emigrated to the United States between the unification of Italy in 1870 and America’s Great Depression were either Calabrese or Sicilian. Therefore, what we know as Italian food, unless it’s specifically Tuscan—remember that vogue in the ’90s?—probably has Calabrese roots.