In the final episode of CNN’s Searching for Italy, actor Stanley Tucci says he ate some of the best food he’s ever tasted in Italy. I think I know the possible reason why, backed up by much of what he highlights and says in this episode: It’s because Sicily is the closest equivalent of the United States, an amalgam of different people, foods, and cultures – in short, a multicultural mosaic. Tucci obviously loved making this six-part series but, if he were acting in a role rather than being himself, he’d be playing one of the most clichéd characters ever: the Ugly American. 

Don’t let Tucci’s smile and amiability fool you: Like a cartoon Marc Antony, he came to bury Italy, not to praise it – but only did so if Italy’s values aligned with his own, which they most certainly did in Sicily via his continuing obsession with illegal immigration. At the risk of sounding prosaic: Wasn’t this series supposed to be about food?  

Now that the series has concluded, it’s obvious that Tucci’s political leanings were more of a driving force than exploring Italy or its people. Once again, his subjects were women (to contrast what he called Sicily’s “macho” culture), the working-class poor (a dinner meeting with a Sicilian family of aristocratic stock concluded with the image of a closing door, i.e., symbolic of their dying ways), and migrants (featured in two segments – a melancholy one of Tucci contemplating abandoned boats on-shore, and a concluding, happier one of an older Sicilian couple taking care of a Nigerian girl and Egyptian boy). 

Although he did give a shout-out to Mt. Etna, which infuses the surrounding agriculture with its volcanic richness, Tucci pretty much concluded that the spices brought over by Arabs and North Africans are what make Sicilian cuisine great. At the beginning of the episode, as he crosses the ferry that takes him to Palermo, he eats an arancino (a fried rice ball), what some would consider a national foodstuff of the region. He says “it’s believed” that the Arabs brought this dish to the island, and that those who visit Sicily must eat one for good luck as one’s ship passes a huge statue of the Madonna in the harbor. Why a food brought by Muslims must be eaten in front of a Christian statue “for good luck” is one irony that neither Tucci nor his crew dared to fathom.  

I had wondered how long it would take Tucci to make a reference to la mafia. Answer: at the four-minute mark, in his introduction. He said that Sicily is “haunted by its mafia connections,” a theme he picked up during his dinner with the aforementioned aristocratic family. He brought up the mafia’s 1992 assassination of heroic judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, a horrific act which galvanized both the island and the Italian mainland. The wealthy son at the table noted that it was “the people” who rose up after the judges’ slayings, leading to a lessening of the group’s power in the city. 

But there was no mention of two crucial historical realities: Cesare Mori, sent to Sicily by Mussolini in the 1920s, successfully jailed thousands of mafiosi, only to have these same criminals re-released in droves by no less than the American Army during World War II…again, an irony lost on Tucci and crew.

The final two cities which Tucci visited were Lampedusa and Catania. For their food? Not really. It’s because both cities have figured prominently in Italy’s decades-long battle with illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East. 

In Lampedusa, Tucci ate some sarde e beccafico, butterflied sardines stuffed with breadcrumbs, pine nuts, raisins, and herbs, then rolled up and baked in-between fresh leaves. We learn that locals used fish because they were poor and couldn’t afford the fancy birds which wealthier Sicilians used in the same dish. (The wealth-gap theme again). Tucci interrupted his lunch to discuss the October 3rd, 2013 shipwreck which left 280 migrants dead (out of 300). Tucci praised the people of Lampedusa for their “compassion,” but lamented that Italy later passed laws which fined local residents for trying to assist them. As Tucci surveyed the wrecked boats, some still with clothing or shoes in them, he sighed about “the desperation which had to be so powerful to come over in small boats like this.” Then, as if in a political TV ad, he noted that the “integration of people into a society makes that society so much richer” – again, playing the Ugly American, imposing his own political beliefs on a nation which has never been historically built for mass immigration. 

That Europe has long reneged on its promises to help Italy with migrants, or that the Italian Navy has a heroic record in saving far more of them than the 280 lost on that fateful day, are yet two more ironies which Tucci and his crew fail to note. (If you’re keeping score: Irony, 5…Tucci, 0). 

In Catania, Tucci eats some pasta alla Norma, named after the heroine in the famous opera of the same name by the city’s home-boy composer Donizetti. What makes this dish so distinctive is its use of eggplants – brought over by the Arabs, of course. Tucci then enjoys a meal with an older Sicilian couple who run a sort of supper-club school for migrants. The couple have unofficially adopted a Nigerian teen (Joy) and an Egyptian teen (Mustafa), both of who cook for him. Tucci is ecstatic over this “fusion of African foods,” and when the over-excited Joy puts too much on his plate, he opines, “Nigerian hospitality and Italian hospitality have a lot in common.” He ends with yet another paean to immigration, saying that “every new arrival to Italy brings change and the chance for regeneration.” Final irony: A TV series meant to celebrate Italians and Italian culture ends by wishing to replace them with immigrants. 

The Sicilians have a word for people like Tucci: cammuria – a nuisance!

As someone who hoped that Searching for Italy would challenge peoples’ perceptions about Italy, I can’t help feel saddened by its missed opportunities. Instead of insights into a culture, we got lectures about being pro-immigration. Instead of celebrating Italy’s illustrious past, we got comments or asides that seemed to (deliberately? unconsciously?) demean it. (In this episode, it was Tucci referring to the garum of classical Roman cuisine, still used in Sicily, as “Roman ketchup, sort of, maybe.”). Instead of an actor sharing his “fascination with his Italian heritage,” we saw an actor who seemed to be bucking for actress Audrey Hepburn’s former job of roving U.N. Cultural Ambassador, cheering up the impoverished folk of the world. 

Searching for Italy has been renewed for next season. Given that the nation is on yet another COVID lock-down, perhaps this extra time will give Tucci and his producers time to rethink their purpose. If the tone remains the same, the show should be re-broadcast not on CNN but on the National Geographic Channel, where it can freely feast on the geo-political vittles of which Tucci seems so obsessively fond. The man who wrote and directed Big Night (1996) has given us a skinny bread-roll rather than a thick timpano. Skip the “thought,” give us the “food.” -BDC