We’d be lying if we said we didn’t miss travelling. While admitting such a privilege-ridden thing amid a pandemic might not be looked upon kindly by some, it is a reality.
So, when we discovered that Stanley Tucci, beloved actor and king of quarantine cocktails, has a show cooking show that will transport us to Italy (no passport required) and help us briefly forget about the pandemic, we had to share the good news with all our fellow hodophiles.
Created with CNN, the docuseries sees Tucci, a longtime food lover, on an expedition all across Italy, where he hunts for the best culinary delights each region has to offer, frequently veering away from tourist hotspots in favour of less obvious but locally loved joints.
Curious? Scroll on for everything there is to know about Stanley Tucci’s Searching For Italy.
What is Stanley Tucci’s Searching For Italy about?
Searching For Italy follows Tucci, a third-generation Italian-American actor as heads back to his homeland to travel across six regions and explore the culture and foods that make them unique, while diving into the history that links them. Speaking to CNN, he said a big motivation for going back to his ancestral country was to change the way the world, and Americans specifically, view Italy.
“I think in America there are a lot of very specific ideas about what is ‘Italian,’ and one of the reasons I wanted to do [my new] show is to dispel some of those myths about what Italy is,” he said.
“People imagine it’s always sunny and people are playing mandolins and eating pizza and chicken parmigiana—which isn’t even an Italian dish. Because my parents were so respectful of their heritage, that cultural identity was really important to me, and still is.”
He later added: “They [Americans] don’t get the extreme diversity of it—that if you’re in Sicily you’re less than 100 miles from the coast of Africa, and if you’re in northern Italy in Alto Adige, people are speaking Swiss, Italian, German—a combination of Italian-German and Swiss-German. And that there’s not a tomato in sight when you go to Lombardy.
“I’d like people to see that incredible diversity, and how it came about—from geography, from invasions, from the influences of the Arab world, from the Spanish, the Normans, the Austrians. It’s an incredible culinary melting pot.”
The first episodes in the series featured Naples, the Amalfi Coast and Rome, and you can get a taste of the cuisine featured (unfortunately just a virtual one) below.
Watch a sneek peek of Searching For Italy below
How can you watch Stanley Tucci’s Searching For Italy in Australia?
To watch Tucci’s Searching For Italy in Australia, you can catch the series on YouTube with a subscription to YouTube Premium (or through its free trial) with a VPN and an American payment method. Those outside of the US can also stream CNN via VPN and a subscription to an affiliated provider.
Will there be a season two of Searching For Italy?
Good news for Italophiles, Tucci fans and food lovers alike, Searching For Italy has already been picked up for a second season that is set to air in 2022, so there’s plenty more pasta where that came from!
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