Italian Town Bans Foreign Food

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

Do you think that foreign food has been a good thing in Korea? Why? Or why not?

What foreign food restaurants do you like?

The Italian city of Lucca was today accused of ‘culinary racism’ after it banned new foreign eateries from opening in its historic center.

Councilors recently voted to deny new licenses to any restaurant or bar within the town’s Renaissance-era walls whose style of cooking was non-Italian.

But Tuscany’s center-left regional government criticized the ban as discriminatory and warned against measures ‘introducing hidden forms of gastronomic or culinary racism.’

The defense of quality is one thing, discrimination is another,’ Paolo Cocchi, the regional councilor for commerce, said on the region’s website.

A spokesman for Lucca’s town hall defended the new rules, saying they were meant to safeguard the city’s traditional and cultural identity and that it also applied to sex shops, fast food restaurants and take-away pizza parlors.

‘The ban targets McDonald’s as much as kebab restaurants,’ he said.

The town council is also urging foreign restaurants to include on their menus at least one course typical of Lucca, prepared exclusively with local ingredients.

‘It’s an invitation, not an order,’ the town hall spokesman said.

Italy, which prides itself on its rich culinary tradition, has fewer foreign restaurants than other European countries.

But their number has risen in recent years as increasing immigration has brought new culinary influences.

Lucca’s spokesman said the four kebab shops already in the city center would be allowed to continue operating as normal.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.