Well yes, he really said it. In an episode dedicated to Greece of the famous show ” Gino, Gordon and Fred “, in which he visits the various countries together with chefs Gino D’Acampo and maitre Fred Sirieix, the famous British chef Gordon Ramsay said that Greek cuisine is better than the Italian one.

Before being scandalized by this sentence, let’s try to understand what the famous Ramsay’s point of view could be. Basically, comparing two kitchens in such a clear way does not make any sense at all.
They are both kitchens with a long tradition, which have in common the fact that they are labeled as “Mediterranean”.

But there is no doubt that, if Ramsay said so, he did not do it as a provocation, but because he really thinks it.
Told by an internationally renowned chef, for us Italians it burns a lot.
But let’s try to calm down and think about the reasons why such a thing could make sense.

RAMSAY, IS GREEK CUISINE BETTER THAN ITALIAN CUISINE?

The points in favor of Greek cuisine

We Italians can say we love Greece and choose it very often as a tourist destination. Of course, we also appreciate their food, generally speaking.
However, when it comes to Greek cuisine, our knowledge mostly stops at a few dishes. We can mention moussaka or souvlaki, perhaps, but I challenge you to list at least ten Greek dishes without looking on the internet.

In fact, Greek cuisine is very diverse, depending on the places we go to.
But, except for some caloric dishes such as pastitsio, similar to baked pasta, the aforementioned moussaka and some savory pie, Greek cuisine has an ingredient that in Italian cuisine we tend to willingly sacrifice.
The semplicity.
And simplicity often goes hand in hand with health.

1.Simplicity and tradition

It is no coincidence that, as I wrote in this article years ago , Greek cuisine is used in scientific studies as a “prototype” of the Mediterranean diet par excellence. You know all the studies that in the last ten, fifteen years, have honored the Mediterranean diet as the best in the world?
Here, the model used is the Greek cuisine.

We, perhaps, we have not noticed.
But the gist is as follows:

• Only extra virgin olive oil in the kitchen, essential cooking with a particular preference for pan-fried or grilled foods, reduced frying, large use of fresh vegetables, fresh and lean dairy products and very few desserts on the menu.
• Reduced use of pasta, since a first course like ours is not present in Greek cuisine, which basically includes appetizers and a single dish.
• Dairy products are not only made from cows but there is a wide use of goat and sheep milk.
• Depending on the location, we can find extensive use of shellfish, fresh fish or meats such as goat or lamb.

There is also a modern Greek cuisine, obviously, usually underestimated, but the point is that the Greeks, compared to us, have not diverged much from a conception of the diet linked to an agricultural world.
And we have forgotten this agricultural world a bit.
Scientists don’t.

If Ancel Keys were still alive, he would think exactly like Ramsay.
In fact, he made an important premise: the Greeks don’t care about other cuisines, they care about their food, they defend their ingredients . When he then he says, Greek cuisine is the best, Ramsay means this. He does not mean the cuisine of the chefs, he means what is brought to the table every day.

2. Health

In fact, how has Italian cuisine changed?
We eat almost exclusively cow or pork or chicken meat, we do not look at the origin, we cook with seed oils, we fry in oils that our great-grandparents did not have or knew in the kitchen.
We allow ourselves to be greatly influenced by food trends, by ready-made products, by packaged foods.
We are flattered by those programs in which a nutritionist reminds us of the healthiness of pasta and legumes, but we prefer it with a little bacon or bacon.
And we prefer instead those programs in which a chef offers us a nice savory pie with puff pastry.

While in Greece they often use phyllo, which is quite another thing on a healthy level.

We know that there is a poor fish, but if we did a short interview among the people who buy fish, no one would mention the horse mackerel, but everyone knows about pangasius.
Like tuna, strictly canned.
In Greece no. They are less globalized than us, they prefer a simpler cuisine that reflects their territory.
In our country, we have a culinary tradition that is split both in North and South and in regional singularities.
This is certainly one of our strengths, but which we defend little except on a few occasions and which becomes a legacy that is difficult to pass on and very easy to forget.

CONCLUSIONS?

Italy is a very undervalued country, but a very rich one.
Yet we are the first not to value it, because we are the first to forget the territory and try to be modern.
It is useless to list the points in favor of Italian cuisine: we have the variety, the versatility of a nation with many different stories, and we are above all lovers of food and cuisine.
We are the country with the most variety of oil in the world, with a huge variety of cheeses, pastry chefs and so on: but what do we buy at the supermarket?
Remember that Ramsay was talking about everyday cooking.
If we are the first to know our richness, because we don’t bring it to the table and make choices opposed to the Mediterranean tradition, we cannot be surprised by the change in our diet and the fact that it is no longer what it once was.