About a week into an open-ended early pandemic stay in Ortigia, the antique, tourist-beloved spit off Siracusa on Sicily’s eastern coast, I had an epiphany. I hated the food. I’d just had a few bites of a clammy aubergine parmigiana, and a plate of oily tuna steak dressed with a bit of lemon was on its way to me. I felt sick and couldn’t face another bite – and yet, supposedly, I was right in the heartlands of the finest continental gastronomy.

This, at least, is the orthodoxy of the world, of tourists low- and high-end and home cooks everywhere – and especially in Italy itself. And now their devotion to the deep-fried rice ball, the breadstick, the sickly spicy sausage paste, the bloodless tomato carpaccio and the watery cream-topped bun has paid off: last month Unesco awarded Italian cuisine ‘special cultural heritage status’. Giorgia Meloni is satisfied, having campaigned for this honour since her election. ‘For us Italians, cuisine is not just food or a collection of recipes,’ she said. ‘It is so much more: it is culture, tradition, work, wealth.’

She’s all too right about the last two: Italy’s dependence on a menu of unchanging greatest hits speaks to the relative poverty and economic hopelessness of the swathes of........

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