Part 1 – Chapter 3 – Italian Immigrants to the U.K. (p. 79)
1 READING
Read the text below and find out
1. where most Italian immigrants settled down.
2. what jobs they mainly did.
3. how and when they became involved in the food trade.
4. how Italians were treated during World War II.
5. how Italian restaurants changed in the second half of the twentieth century.
6. what Italian foods have become fashionable in Britain in the last few years.
Italians in Britain
In Italy the conditions of the rural population steadily deteriorated throughout the nineteenth century and Italian emigrants fled the poverty of their homeland to seek their fortunes on the streets of London, Glasgow, Newcastle and the valleys of south Wales. In so doing, they wrought a revolution in Britain's catering industry, one whose benefits are still being felt to this day.
The centre of the Italian community in Britain throughout the nineteenth century was ‘Little Italy’ situated in a part of London called Clerkenwell. Later Italians spread to the north of England, Wales and Scotland. The majority of them was organ grinders, ice cream sellers and plaster figures makers.
In the 1850s the food trade, and in particular ice cream, provided a living for many Italian families. These immigrants started as grossly exploited labour, often lodged in poor conditions and paid little, but they progressed from pushing barrows to acquiring horse-drawn vans to sell their ices. The first widely publicised Italian connection with catering came when Swiss Italian Carlo Gatti started selling ice cream in London in 1850. His product rapidly became famous and he died a millionaire in 1870. The first true ice cream cone appears to have been the invention of the Italian immigrants living in the Manchester area in the middle 1800s.
Many Italians found employment in the catering industry opening their own cafes, restaurants and wine shops, some of which remain today. The first restaurant we know of was run by Joseph Moretti, from Venice. He ran an 'Italian eating house’ in London, just off Leicester Square, from 1803-1805.
Italians had managed to establish themselves successfully in mainstream British life, commerce and politics until Mussolini declared war on Britain in 1940. During the war, Italians were declared alien enemies and Churchill's instruction to imprison every Italian male between the ages of 16 and 70 created general panic and considerable antipathy. Some Italians had their shop windows smashed by angry crowds, some were imprisoned At first they rarely went in for fancy Mediterranean fare and mainly adapted their style to the British habits and tastes: they stocked Oxo cubes and pork pies; sold chips and fish and beans on toast.
Later they changed into the typical British Italian restaurants serving up veal and pasta, accompanied by Chianti and followed by tiramisu. At the time it was hard to find the proper Italian ingredients: for example, olive oil, others were deported.Thousands of men were separated from their wives and were confined on the Isle of Man.
More and more Italian restaurants and shops opened after the war and became a regular feature of British towns all over the UK. was bought at the chemist’s in small expensive bottles!
Italian pizza became very popular too. Pizza Express was started in 1965, Pizzaland in the 1970s and Pizza Hut from USA in 1973.
The seventies were a real boom time for Italian restaurants and by 1998 there were some 5,000 Italian restaurants in Britain, 2,900 of which were pasta or pizza establishments and the balance full service restaurants with an annual turnover approaching £1 billion. Gradually the quality of the food improved with the use of fresh produce and the finest Italian ingredients and finally the Italian craze swept London and other large British towns. Every year or so there is something Italian which marks the fashion in food: it has happened with rocket, porcini mushrooms, basil, prosciutto, balsamic vinegar, Prosecco wine, etc.
The region of the country containing the most Italian Britons is London, where over 50,000 people of Italian origin live, followed by Manchester, Bedford, and Glasgow.
2 READING
Read the text and fill in the gaps with the words below.
bought • came • company • labour • largest • medical • paid
population • recruited • ticket • villages • weather • work
Italians in Bedford
Bedford is home to the (1) … concentration of Italian families in the UK with an estimated (2) … of 14,000. Between 1951 and the early 1960s a brick (3) … from Bedford found itself short of (4) … for the reconstruction boom and (5) … more than 1,500 men from (6) … in southern Italy. Many others (7) … around the same time. Each man was given a (8) … examination, a (9) … to England and a bed there.
With loneliness, cold (10) … and terrible food besides their heavy (11) … most of the men did not last out their four-year contracts. But many did, (12) … houses and (13) … their families' passage to come and join them.
3 READING
Read the text and complete the following sentences.
1. Italians immigrants settled in London in …………
2. They mainly lived in the quarters of …………
3. Many of them found a job in …………
4. The Italian community was largest in …………
5. Such restaurants as Bertorelli’s, Quo Vadis, Quaglino’s …………
6. In the 1970s ………… there were 30,000 Italians in London and most of them were employed in the catering industry.
7. Today …………
Italians in London
The Italian community in London dates back to the early nineteenth century. These were mainly educated political refugees and lived in London's original Italian quarter in Holborn. Later Italian immigrants started to come to London looking for a job and settled around Clerkenwell.
From the 1890s onwards a new grouping of Italian immigrants began to settle around Soho in London where they found jobs in hotels, restaurants and cafes. The Italian Society of Mutual Aid for Hotel and Restaurant Employees was actually set up in 1886 in Gerrard Street, now centre of London’s Chinatown. Many of these new immigrants worked in London’s restaurants and then started their own restaurant.
The Italian community saw its height in the early twentieth century: by 1911 there were 12,000 Italians in London which had fallen to 11,000 by 1921 after the First World War.)
It was then that Italian restaurants such as Bertorelli’s (1913), Leoni’sQuo Vadis (1926), and Quaglino’s (1929) started their successful career, which has led them to become over the decades some of the most fashionable and glamorous venues for dining out in London.
By 1971 there were 30,000 Italians in London and many more thousands all over the country, most of whom were still involved in the catering industry. They have definitely left their mark on London life.
Besides the London-born of Italian origin, there are today thousands of Italians who live and work in London contributing to areas of media and entertainment, the arts, sport, business, research and innovation.
4 READING
Read the text below and find out
1. who made ice cream in London in the 19th century.
2. how ice cream was sold.
3. how were icemen called.
4. what a toot was.
5. which Italian words were changed into English.
6. the difference between water ices and cream ices.
The Hokey-Pokey man
Among the Italian immigrants in the middle 1800s the food trade, and in particular ice cream, provided a living for many families. Most street sellers of ice-cream, like the ubiquitous organ-grinders, were Italian. They were often called "Hokey Pokey" men.
The term "Hokey-Pokey" presumably evolved from the Italian cry of the Italian ice cream vendors: "O che poco", with reference to the cheap price. At the end of the 1800's there were around 900 Hokey-Pokey men in London's Little Italy. Many of them progressed from pushing barrows to acquiring horse-drawn vans to sell their ices.
Moreover, ice cream in a cup became known as a ‘toot’, which may have come from the Italian word ‘tutto’ (all) as customers were urged to ‘eat it all’.
“Italian ice-men constitute a distinct feature of London life […]. We note in various quarters the ice-barrow surrounded by groups of eager and greedy children, but fail to realize what a vast and elaborate organization is necessary to prove this delicacy in all parts of London […].
In little villainous-looking and dirty shops an enormous business is transacted in the sale of milk for the manufacture of halfpenny ices. This trade commences at about four in the morning. The men in varied and extraordinary clothespour into the streets, throng the milk-shops, drag their barrows out, and begin to mix and freeze the ices. Carlo Gatti has an ice depot close at hand, which opens at four in the morning, and here a motley crowd congregates with baskets, pieces of cloth, flannel, and various other contrivances for carrying away their daily supply of ice. Gradually the freezing process is terminated, and then the men, after dressing themselves in a comparatively-speaking decent manner, start off, one by one, to their respective destinations. It is a veritable exodus […] .
The real ice, however, for which there is a universal demand, is that known under the generic term of cream ice. But milk is indispensable to its manufacture, and indeed eggs should also be used. This necessity altogether destroys the golden dreams suggested by the water ices, and great are the efforts made to sell the latter, or at least to mix a goodly proportion with the expensive cream delicacy. Nevertheless, the profits on selling cream ices must amount to nearly a hundred per cent, so that after all the Italians are not so much to be pitied because their customers display inconsiderate pertinacity in their demand for that form of ice which is not only the most agreeable to the palate, but the most wholesome and nutritious […].”
(Adapted from J. Thompson and Adolphe Smith, Victorian London, 1877)
5 VOCABULARY
Read the article below and
a. make a list of all the Italian foods mentioned;
b. match the words underlined in the text with the following words meaning more or less the same:
1. places where you can eat
2. deal with
3. reached maturity
4. overcooked and sticky
5. instruments that break something into fine pieces or powder
6. a type of salad
7. far from the original
8. a bowl of spaghetti
9. fundamental principles
10. sausages with mashed potatoes
11. be accepted/successful
12. making/cooking
Britain's Italian restaurants face the ultimate test.
Few cuisines have influenced our eating habits more than Italian. But do the provolone, prosciutto and pizza in Britain's restaurants measure up?
Remember what Italian food in Britain used to be like before we started drizzling extra virgin olive oil on our rocket and putting porcini mushrooms in our risotto? In the 1960s, a new wave of Italian immigrants arrived in the UK, and many set up restaurants with names like Amalfi or Da Luigi. To survive, they had to adapt their cooking to obtuse British palates, and the result was hopelessly mongrelised.
The spaghetti was mushy, and the sauce, whether made with meat, fish or vegetable, invariably contained enough cooked tomato and/or UHT cream to drown a dog. Then there was ‘spag bol’, which is about as Bolognese as beans on toast. To make our evenings at Da Luigi feel exotic, the waiters showered everything with black pepper from stupidly large grinders. That was what the British wanted Italian food to be. There was no clearer symptom of the shocking state of our cookery.
Now, of course, we know better. Balsamic vinegar is as familiar as ketchup. They sell buffalo-milk mozzarella at Sainsbos. Most of us understand what al dente means, and some of us can even tackle an artichoke with confidence.
The biggest single factor in Britain's recent food revolution has been the influence of Italy. If he hadn't been trained by Gennaro Contaldo, Jamie Oliver would still be knocking out bangers and mash in his parents' pub. Britain's new culinary value system has Italian fingerprints all over it; the passion for local, seasonal produce may be news here, but it has been holy writ in the peninsula for centuries.
But how much have we really learned from Italy? And are our Italian eateries as authentic as we like to think? It is no paradox to say that the most revealing measure of the health of Britain's food is the quality of its Italian restaurants. If the trattorie we patronise pass muster, it can truly be said that, gastronomically speaking, we have come of age.
(Adapted from«The Independent», August 13, 2007)
6 READING
Read the article again and answer the following questions:
1. What is the test mentioned in the title?
2. How did Italian restaurants of the 1960s differ from today’s ones?
3. How has Jamie Oliver become the most famous English chef?
Questo file è un’estensione online del corso M. G. Dandini, NEW SURFING THE WORLD.
Copyright © 2010 Zanichelli Editore S.p.A., Bologna [1056]
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