I'm Italian, living in a large town in the north (Turin).
Yes, you can have a cappuccino in the afternoon, even in the night. Yes, we can eat a pizza at lunch time. No, we don't have siesta, but one hour stop for lunch. An yes, when I was a kid, my mother gave me a cup of milk before going to sleep.
Are any other stereotypes that we can dismiss?
Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
151–160 of 176 posts
Re: Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
#152You can use oat milk.
Here in Canada the best one I found is called "Earth's Own".
Its gluten free, and has a very mild flavour.
The taste of coffee can be improved a little bit buy sprinkling cocoa power into the foam of the oat milk. And optionally adding honey for sweetness.
Oat milk tastes a little different than regular milk. But its very close and foams very well. There might some difference, because I noticed the coffee would hit a little bit stronger with oat milk. Perhaps there's some chemistry going ... don't know why.
But the reason I switched, is because I was getting stomach cramps about once a month from cow's milk in my coffee. Would ruin my day. The only thing that help me with the stomach cramps was a bowl of rice for some reason.
Decided to try other milks to see if would fix my problem and it did. Never liked any other kinds of milk until oat milk. They add lots of chalk to the nut milks. So with oat milk you can avoid that too.
The only downside is the price.
Re: Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
#153Italians have indeed the best espressos/ristrettos that I've ever had the pleasure of drinking, but other than that the origin coffee culture is pretty much non-existing in Northern Italy (I've never been to the South). Comparatively speaking Milano is a desert when it comes to origin coffee shops, and the same goes for their hip neighbours across the Alps, i.e. Paris. From my direct experience European cities furthe…
As an Australian I've had a terrible time finding a decent cup of coffee in Europe (Italy excepted, but even then the standards aren't great). I admit I haven't been to Budapest or Bratislava but I've been to some of the supposedly-best places in Berlin and been pretty disappointed. A shocking fraction of them use UHT milk.
There is some fantastic coffee in the UK (personally I know of good places in Leeds, Huddersfield, Manchester, Brighton, London). I think you need to know locals to help you find the good places, as they're usually a bit out of the way.
I drank a lot of coffee in Oz though. I loved how easy it is to get a good coffee. It seemed more accessible and standards higher across the board.
Re: Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
#154I do not buy the conclusions in this video. For a couple of reasons. First off, anecdote. I myself am severely lactose intolerant, which I inherited genetically. I have lived in Italy and know Italians pretty well, and in my experience lactose intolerance is so unusual in Italy that people are often amazed to hear of my condition. Lactase (Lactaid etc.) is quite rare in the country, so much so that I usually bring in…
I’m gonna drop my $.02 in here because I am SEVERELY lactose intolerant and would like to discuss with someone else who is lactose intolerant. (This comment is unrelated to the video)
I usually use 2-4 lactaid capsules when eating dairy and sometimes 8 when it’s some super cheesy pizza or something. I live in the United States. I visited Italy last year, and I ate a lot of ice cream, cheesy pastas, and pizzas without any problems. Same with my father and uncle who are lactose intolerant. Do you know if there’s anything different about Italian dairy vs American dairy? I recognize my experience is super anecdotal, but it’s quite funny as my uncle, my father, and I got cocky about our ability to eat US dairy after coming home from Italy and immediately regretted it! So yeah, we’re definitely lactose intolerant
Here’s also this silly link I just got off of google: https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/living-with-lactose-intole...
Re: Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
#155I am italian, I am slightly lactose intolerant, and I think this video is both terribly wrong and quite offensive.
First, the whole thing is based on a wrong assumption. It is not true that italians do not drink cappuccino after 11 o clock. This should be rephrased as follows: "why italians do not drink cappuccino after breakfast, whenever that is". I'll give you the quickest example I can think of. When I was way younger, on holidays I would go party in the night and wake up way late and I would have breakfast very late, let's say at the time of lunch. I would still order a cappuccino if I felt like it. That's because, is short, time is... relative! The same applies of course to anyone having night shifts and any other scenario you can think of.
To support the first argument I'll also add that italians would never have a cappuccino after they had breakfast, even if it's still early in the morning. Usually an Italian will have a cappuccino early before work, and then a coffee in the coffee break at mid morning. I wouldn't imagine that anyone would get a cappuccino then, even if it's before 11 am, and even if they did not have a cappuccino before.
So why do italians do no drink cappuccino after breakfast? Simply put, for the same reason in any given meal in western culture no one would eat the desert before the main course in any given meal. I would say it's a cultural thing, but we can call it as we want, the only sure thing is that it has nothing to do with lactose.
Before anyone replies that the order of servings in meals is not comparable to the time at which is admissible to drink cappuccino, please consider that we italians are very very very observant/proud/aware of what/when we eat.
In Italy there are hundreds of other non written rules like this for many other types of food, and like this one, most of them are part of the culture. There are literally too many examples to make, so I'll give you just this: go to Bologna and ask for some spaghetti with the bolognese sauce. If you are lucky they'll simply call you a "tourist". The bolognese sauce can be put on any kind of pasta, except spaghetti. This is very little known and the weirdest part is that all around the world the bolognese sauce became famous with the spaghetti, but I can assure you that no one from bologna will ever have the bolognese sauce on spaghetti. Why? In the end is only a cultural thing. Even if I must add that saying that it's only a cultural thing makes me feel dirty, because putting the bolognese sauce on spaghetti is actually a sin.
Having said that, I hope the message got through and please, do enjoy food, especially italian food, whenever you feel like it and however you like it!
Re: Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
#156I'm Italian (now in the US), and I had some friends come visit in Italy a while ago, and went out to lunch with some of my family. One of my friends ordered a cappuccino mid-lunch and my family almost passed out :)
I spent some time in Sicily and one of the things I discovered was I could not get pizza for lunch,only dinner. I thought it was just one restaurant being obstinate but town after it was the same response. And to this American who enjoyed a slice between classes I could not understand why. I concluded it was too hot and no one wanted to turn up the pizza oven. Is that correct assumption?
Yes, you can get pizza for lunch in Italy. I know because I had it in Sorrento. :) But I had to insist on it (hey, it's on the menu!) and the owner grumbled something something about dumb tourists and about having to heat the oven and charged me extra for it.
Re: Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's bollocks, it's just a taste thing. Like I said on another comment, cappuccino works for breakfast because it's sweet (mostly because of the milk), which pairs well with a 'cornetto' (jam croissant). Personally I'm not a fan of milk and much prefer espresso, and I'm not lactose intolerant. Lunch and dinner are salty food, and there's no place for milky drinks. In fact, drinking milk in general is just a breakfast…
Weird, lots of people drink milk with their lunch here in The Netherlands, and I'm pretty sure the Germans do as well. Then again I feel our bread and toppings might be less salty. Young cheese and cold cuts, less intense flavours, less greens also.
Indeed, Italians find that... weird :)
But so it's the whole Dutch lunch for an Italian (bread, butter and hagelslag wouldn't even be considered a meal, I think)
Re: Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those of us who can't watch videos at work for various reasons, I wish every HN submission marked [Video] had a summary. Thank you.
Where do you work that you can't watch a video? What's the reason? Genuinely curious, not insulting/snarky.
In addition to the previous comments pointing out it's badly seen and quite visible, there are also many companies that blacklist (or not whitelist) Youtube.
Re: Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hypothesis of the video is that lactose intolerance is why they don't generally drink cappucinos after 11am. But even a small amount of milk can create a large amount of flatus (gas). And now you're back in the office, in the middle of a meeting. Come to think of it, not a bad idea: next time, cappucinos on the house at lunchtime for everyone! Maybe add a few milk-based Indian sweets to the snack tray too, for mu…
Traditional italians (more in the south nowadays) don't go into the office after lunch. They are doing their siesta, and just work longer after their sleep. I'm doing the same for the last years. So my italian lunch coffee (I got a proper machine) with crema helps me to digest my meal. But the siesta much more. But no Cappuccino after 3 of course. Of my family two are lactose tolerant, and two not. Makes major differ…
You are describing a long lunch break that has basically disappeared in most of the country. It survives almost exclusively among shopkeepers, who often will shut shop 12 to 3 or 12 to 4 (or even to 5, in tourist towns where they expect to work through the evening) and some extremely inefficient public services.
Re: Why Italians don't drink a cappuccino after 11am [video]
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Italian here. We don't usually have cappuccino after 12pm because cappuccino is a breakfast meal. We do have coffee after 12pm tho. For Italian people, cappuccino toghether with lunch / dinner is a taboo, it's like broccoli ice cream we can say :)
It's just milky drinks in general. I always found it weird to see people having milk with lunch in American TV shows. Its sweetness doesn't pair well with saltier lunch and dinner time food. It's not a lactose intolerance problem at all.
Yes exactly: drinking milk with salty meals is a taboo in Italy. I've always being shocked by the fact that UK/US citizens drink mainly milk instead of drinking water. Moreover, I visited US a couple of years ago, and it was shockingly hard to find normal pure water, since people there use to drink almost only water variants or other beverages. In Italy the only beverages you usually find on the table during lunch/dinner are water and wine.