As the title of my book, How Italian Food Conquered the World, asserts, the domination of Italian food, from pizza to white truffles, is as evident in Boca Raton as it is in Beijing. In fact, it would be unusual to find any new restaurant that isn’t Asian that doesn’t have a pasta or pizza section on it.
Here are some highlights of the inexorable march of Italian food to the top. First century A.D.—The world’s first known cookbook is Roman, entitled Apicius (after the nobleman Marcus Gavius Apicius) or De Re Coquinaria. Third century A.D.—Party animal and emperor Heliogablus mounts extravagant, all-night orgy dinners at which he serves six hundred ostriches and vats of eels fattened on the meat of Christians slain in the Coliseum.
