I live in Umbria in a town that is a short walking distance from the Tiber River. Every morning possible, I go for a 4.5km run along the riverside path. For me this is church. Running beside the river, I remind myself of my values and renew my faith in life. “Tiberia” is the term I have coined to capture both the place and that state of mind.

Tiberia also represents the sum of my culinary experience here, expressed through these original recipes, which bring together a reverence for local foods and traditions as well as my knowledge of international cuisines and my background in the United States. I refer to this as “code-switching cuisine” because, despite the fact that I am a brown person, which people automatically assume to mean that I am embedded in some sort of “brown” gastronomic context, the only imprint I carry from the past is the curiosity and wonder that comes from exposure to variety.  The bland food my German-American father prepared for our family meals reflected a not uncommon appreciation for insipidity that I never shared. Therefore, in my case, the new term “assimilation cuisine” doesn’t really apply.

I am not in a diaspora maintaining the distant national traditions of collective culinary identity, while being exposed to another. I am not facing choices about gastronomic loyalties. I move fluidly from one tradition to the next, none of them my own, curious though flexible about notions of authenticity. That, more than anything, marks my heritage as an American. The term “fusion” also doesn’t work for me, because it can be tapped into anywhere by anyone. It can range from knowledgeable professionals creating conceptual dishes, to day-after partiers opening their refrigerator and hashing together leftovers. 

My perspective is defined initially by my 30-year status as a permanent resident, American immigrant in Italy. I am an American-Italian. From this vantage point, I draw upon various culinary techniques and cultural traditions to personalize and manage my table, using the mono-culinary culture (albeit rife with variety in itself) that surrounds me as a springboard. The result is a celebration of tradition, innovation, and originality brought together in varying degrees to maximize the potential inherent in each. 

In the end, my purpose is to transmit the story of Tiberia using the culinary realm as my medium, and in so doing communicate without words what Italy tastes like to me.

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