When food in Europe is a matter of taste

‘Five weeks in Italy drove me bonkers, and by week four I craved anything but Italian,’ says one reader. Photograph: amareto/Getty Images/iStockphoto

In response to Adrian Chiles’s article (After three weeks travelling in Europe, I’m calling it – British food is the best, 7 September), having lived in Italy for more than 20 years I can confidently state that there is no “Italian” food. The country has a multitude of regional styles, sometimes radically different in flavour, cooking techniques and ingredients.

Any town big enough to warrant more than one restaurant will have, in addition to an Italian restaurant, a Chinese, a sushi joint, a Turkish kebab shop and a pizzeria at the very least. In Turin, which compared with Milan is a mountain hamlet with cows wandering its cobbled alleys, there are Thai, Indonesian, Mongolian barbecue, Persian, Indian, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Armenian restaurants – and even a British restaurant serving fish and chips, meat pies and a full English breakfast.
Daniel Monti
Turin, Italy