A real pasta war is being fought in the United States and this time it is not a culinary metaphor. The commercial tension between Washington and Italian producers has flared up around a national symbol: the pasta. The United States, in an attempt to protect domestic production and rebalance the trade balance, imposed heavy customs duties on the most exported Italian formats, hitting historic brands such as Rummo, De Cecco and La Molisana. But behind the economic news lies an entire cultural universe, made up of myths, passions and misunderstandings that tell of the contradictory and fascinating relationship between America and Italian pasta.
It wasn’t love at first sight. When at the end of the 19th century millions of Italian immigrants landed in New York bringing with them bags of flour and family recipes, pasta was looked at with suspicion: too strange, too “foreign“. The first Italian restaurants, the so-called “spaghetti houses“, were considered low-class places. Yet, little by little, Americans began to taste those steaming spaghetti covered in sauce, and it was a gastronomic love at first sight. In the 1920s, the American industry discovered the commercial potential of dried pasta: local brands were born that tried to “Americanize” the product, offering reduced cooking times and sweeter sauces.
But it was the fifties that decreed the true consecration: the Dolce Vita, Sophia Loren, Fellini, the Italian dream that conquered Hollywood and the tables of the United States. Since then, pasta is no longer just food, but a symbol of lifestyle. In the United States there is a National Spaghetti Day, celebrated every January 4, and even an entire month dedicated to pasta, October, with food festivals and competitions from New York to San Francisco.
On television, American chefs have transformed it into a glamorous dish, often reinterpreting it to the point of heresy. There is no shortage of “creative” versions: pasta with ketchup, broken spaghetti in the pot, macaroni rinsed under cold water so as not to let them “attack”, and of course the omnipresent “Alfredo pasta”, which in Italy no one recognizes as a traditional dish.
Yet the history of Fettuccine Alfredo is authentically Italian, even if overwhelmed by American enthusiasm. Alfredo Di Lelio, a Roman restaurateur of the early twentieth century, invented a dish of fettuccine with butter and parmesan to refresh his sick wife.
By chance, two silent film actors, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, tasted it in Rome and fell in love with it. Back in Hollywood, they spread the recipe, but in the United States it became something else: more cream, more garlic, more cheese, more “American taste”. Thus was born Fettuccine Alfredo which today stands out on the menus of large chains such as Olive Garden and Macaroni Grill, a symbol of the American reinterpretation of Italian cuisine. In recent years, however, a new generation of American chefs and consumers has begun to rediscover true Italian gastronomic tradition. In New York, Los Angeles and Miami, regional restaurants serving fresh bronze-drawn pasta, with DOP ingredients and philological combinations, are multiplying.
“Made in Italy” labels have become synonymous with authenticity and refinement. At the same time, the American pasta market is evolving: the demand for gluten-free pasta, legumes, spelled or even seaweed is growing, a sign of a society attentive to health and sustainability. But even in this food revolution, Italy remains the point of reference: no one can truly replicate the taste, consistency and culture of Italian pasta. Precisely for this reason, the new American import duties risk changing the game. Italian companies denounce a protectionist move that damages a sector worth over one and a half billion euros a year and puts at risk a product that is a symbol of our national identity.
But more than economic, this is a war of imagination: because pasta, in the United States, is not just a food. It is a cultural bridge between two worlds.
It is the memory of the grandparents who arrived at Ellis Island with a suitcase and a bag of semolina. It’s the familiar scene of Sunday lunch, shared by millions of Americans of Italian descent. It is the dish that has been able to unite the two sides of the Atlantic better than any diplomatic treaty.
And so, in the midst of a new tariff war, pasta returns to being what it has always been: a symbol of identity, belonging and universal love. Because every time an American wraps up a forkful of spaghetti, consciously or not, he makes a small gesture of Italy.