Bitter Greens

Food-based reflections on Italian food, American culture, and globalization.
Despite the inclusion of six classic recipes, Bitter Greens is not an ethnic cookbook but a Roman banquet of political satire, cultural criticism, and culinary memoir. Set primarily in the Empire State and arranged like the courses of a traditional Italian meal, Anthony Di Renzo’s wide-ranging essays meditate on Italian food at the noon of American imperialism and the twilight of ethnicity, exploring such issues as the Wegmans supermarket chain’s conquest of Sicily; assembly-line sausages; the fabled onion fields of Canastota, New York; the tripe shops of postwar Brooklyn; Hunts Point Market and Andy Boy broccoli rabe; and the fatal lure of Sicilian chocolate. Is the new global supermarket a democratic feast, Di Renzo asks, or a cannibal potluck where consumers are themselves consumed? Sip an aperitif, toast Horace and Juvenal, and enjoy Chef Di Renzo’s catered symposium. It will feed your mind, tickle your ribs, and heal your spleen.
Anthony Di Renzo, a fugitive from advertising, teaches classical rhetoric and professional writing at Ithaca College. Cited in Best American Essays, his work has appeared in Alimentum, Il Caffé,, Cottonwood Magazine, Feile-Festa, The Normal School, River Styx, Syracuse Scholar, and Voices in Italian Americana, and he is the author of American Gargoyles: Flannery O’Connor and the Medieval Grotesque and editor of If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis. He lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and cats, and buys his broccoli rabe at the local farmers market.