Festa+Italiana - Thunder Bay Online, Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada

09/13/2026

If You Think Italian Cheese Means Parmesan and Mozzarella, You’re Missing Most of Italy

Italy has hundreds of cheeses, and they change dramatically from one region to the next. The difference is not just in the milk. It comes from altitude, climate, aging, local animals, traditional techniques and the food culture around each cheese.

Start in Emilia-Romagna with Parmigiano Reggiano. This is one of the most famous cheeses in the world, but eating a properly aged piece in Italy is very different from buying pre-grated “Parmesan.” Depending on how long it has aged, it can be buttery, nutty, crumbly and full of tiny crunchy crystals. In Emilia, people do not just grate it over pasta; they eat pieces of it on its own, with balsamic vinegar or alongside cured meats.

Move north toward Lombardy and the character changes completely. Gorgonzola can be creamy and mild or stronger and more pungent depending on the style, while Taleggio is soft, washed-rind and far more aromatic than its gentle texture suggests. Mascarpone also comes from Lombardy, although most travelers know it only because of tiramisù.

In Valle d’Aosta, Fontina belongs to the mountains. It is rich, elastic and made for melting, which is why it works so well in Alpine dishes. Piedmont has Castelmagno, one of those cheeses that many visitors never hear about until they arrive, but it has a long history and can become wonderfully complex as it matures.

Then there is Veneto with Asiago, another cheese whose personality changes with age. Young Asiago can be soft and milky, while aged versions become firmer, sharper and much more intense.

Central Italy is where sheep’s milk becomes especially important. Pecorino Romano is salty, hard and powerful, and it is one of the essential ingredients behind Roman pasta dishes such as cacio e pepe, carbonara and amatriciana. Pecorino Toscano is generally milder and softer in character, particularly when young, and it is often eaten simply with bread, honey or cured meats.

Go south and fresh cheeses start becoming impossible to ignore. Campania is the home of Mozzarella di Bufala Campana, and this is one of those foods that makes much more sense when you taste it close to where it is produced. It should be soft, juicy, slightly tangy and full of milk, not a dry white ball that has spent days in a supermarket fridge.

Puglia gives you burrata and stracciatella. Burrata looks like mozzarella from the outside, but once you cut it open, the centre spills out with stracciatella and cream. It is rich, delicate and one of the easiest foods in Italy to understand after one bite. Stracciatella itself is the creamy shredded filling inside burrata, and in Puglia you will often see it used on bread, vegetables and local dishes.

Across southern Italy you also find cheeses such as provolone, scamorza and caciocavallo. These stretched-curd cheeses can be fresh, smoked, aged, mild or surprisingly strong. Caciocavallo is especially easy to recognize because of its hanging shape, traditionally tied in pairs and suspended to mature.

Sicily adds another completely different chapter with ricotta salata, a salted and aged form of ricotta that can be grated over pasta. It is one of the ingredients that gives Pasta alla Norma its unmistakable character.

And this is really the point: there is no single “Italian cheese.”

There are mountain cheeses, sheep’s milk cheeses, buffalo milk cheeses, fresh cheeses that should be eaten almost immediately, and hard cheeses designed to age for years.

So when you travel through Italy, do not just ask for “a cheese board.”

Ask what is local.

The best cheese on the table is often the one that has travelled the shortest distance.

09/13/2026

Italy’s Gelato Is More Than Pistachio and Chocolate

Choosing gelato in Italy can be surprisingly difficult, especially when you are standing in front of a counter with twenty different flavors and only enough room for two or three.

The classics are a good place to start.

Pistacchio is one of the most famous, but a good pistachio gelato should taste nutty rather than extremely sweet. The color is usually more muted green than bright fluorescent green.

Stracciatella is another essential flavor. It starts with creamy fior di latte gelato and adds thin shards of chocolate that crack as you eat them. Simple, but incredibly good when it is made properly.

Nocciola is hazelnut, a flavor especially associated with Piedmont, where some of Italy’s most prized hazelnuts are grown. If you like chocolate and hazelnut together, try gianduia or bacio.

Fior di latte may look plain, but do not ignore it. It is essentially a pure milk-flavored gelato, and because there are very few ingredients to hide behind, it can tell you a lot about the quality of a gelateria.

Crema is richer, traditionally made with ingredients such as milk, eggs and sugar, while zabaglione takes things further with the flavor of egg yolks and Marsala w**e.

For something refreshing during an Italian summer, limone, fragola and melone are excellent choices. Fruit flavors are often among the easiest ways to notice seasonal ingredients, especially when the gelateria is making them from fresh fruit.

Amarena is completely different. The combination of creamy gelato and slightly sour cherries gives you that perfect sweet-and-tart contrast.

Then there is caffè, which tastes like Italy in gelato form, and mandorla, a delicate almond flavor you will often encounter more frequently as you travel south.

One small tip when choosing a gelateria: beautiful mountains of gelato piled impossibly high above the containers are not always a sign of quality. Many excellent gelaterie keep their gelato lower in the tubs, and some traditional shops even store it inside covered metal containers called pozzetti.

And if the pistachio is glowing bright green, I would probably keep walking.

The best part is that you do not need to choose only one flavor.

Two flavors in the same cup or cone is completely normal, which means Italy gives you a very good excuse to keep experimenting.

Which one are you ordering first?

09/13/2026

09/13/2026

You knew the faces long before you knew the names.

One wall of her bedroom was covered in oval frames. Stiff studio portraits, high collars, black shawls, a man with a mustache looking straight through the camera at you. A few had a piece of dried palm tucked behind the glass. One or two had a black ribbon across the corner 🖼️

They were the ones who stayed. The brother who never came over, the mother she left at nineteen and never saw again, the sister who wrote every month for forty years. The wallpaper behind those frames was two shades darker than the rest of the room because they never once moved.

She dusted them. She talked to them. And when she died, the family stood in that bedroom and understood that half the people on that wall had just become permanently unidentified, because the only person who knew them was gone 🕯️

Is there a photograph in your family that nobody can put a name to anymore?

09/13/2026