What is this? Homemade breakfast in Italy is usually a straightforward affair. Traditional breakfast drinks in Italian households are coffee, tea and cocoa milk for the kids and the main breakfast foods are bread with butter and jam, biscuits and cereals.
Eating so late at night means Italians don't wake up hungry in the morning, therefore a light breakfast of coffee and cake is enjoyed as a “morning snack” and is preferred to protein-packed heavy American or English breakfast options. You might wonder about the benefit of starting your day eating cake.
A typical Italian breakfast is a cappuccino, espresso with croissant, bread with butter, jam, or Nutella. Additionally, if you're making your breakfast in Italy at home, you will most likely find cereals or Mulino Bianco biscuits.
Italians typically only have a coffee, or “espresso,” for breakfast. In Italy, an espresso is called a “cafe” and the places you go to get coffee are called “bars.” Some Italians also order a cappuccino or café con latte for breakfast. Some Italians will eat a pastry on occasion with their coffee.
Italians like their morning coffee milky. Breakfast time is the traditional time for macchiato, cappuccino, and mokaccino.
Some Italians don't like the idea of sweetening coffee with sugar, so they go for milk instead. In this case we're talking about “caffé macchiato” (pron “kaf'fé mak. 'kia.to”) which is an Espresso with just a bit of milk foam in it. You don't have to ask for milk since macchiato always comes with it.
Caffè Latte
Much like a cappuccino, caffè lattes are traditionally enjoyed in the morning.
Breakfast is not the main meal of the day in Italy – it's more like a quick burst of energy to get you going in the morning not a feast to linger over. Italians have dinner quite late at night – so, the idea is that they don't need to load themselves with heavy food first thing in the morning.
Thou shalt only drink cappuccino, caffé latte, latte macchiato or any milky form of coffee in the morning, and never after a meal. Italians cringe at the thought of all that hot milk hitting a full stomach. An American friend of mine who has lived in Rome for many years continues, knowingly, to break this rule.
11:00pm – Midnight.
Eggs in Italian cuisine. Whereas eggs in the United States are primarily a breakfast item it's the opposite in Italy. Italians often have eggs for dinner and in classic lunchtime dishes like pasta carbonara.
The most common classic breakfast food in Italy is the “cornetto”, or croissant. A cornetto is often filled with some kind of cream, custard, jam or chocolate spread, and accompanied by a coffee.
Since Italians have about six hours between lunch and dinner, they usually grab something in between: These snacks are called merende and are basically morning or afternoon pick-me ups that can be sweet (like fruit or biscotti, a hard cookie) or savory (like crackers or a slice of pizza al taglio).
Most dinners consist of a salad, the primo (pasta or soup dish) and the secondo (meat or fish dish). The Italians also enjoy cooked vegetables like artichokes, eggplants, mushrooms, spinach and zucchini, which they either buy at the market or grow in their gardens.
A type of breakfast food that is very popular all over Italy is uovo sbattuto (literally, beaten egg): basically, egg yolk that is beaten with sugar to create a uniform pale mixture. It can be eaten on its own, together with your morning coffee or used to dip ladyfingers in.
Italians have a thing about drinking cappuccino after noon. It's just not done (some say it's because the milk and foam makes it a replacement for a meal, and all that dairy upsets the digestion). And you'll never see an Italian ordering a cappuccino after dinner.
This tradition has its origins in the ancient Italian coffee roasters, in which water was served to customers before they tasted the coffee. The roasters, in fact, wanted customers to appreciate all the aromatic nuances of coffee without having the taste of other foods previously eaten.
After a traditional Italian meal or dinner you are likely to be offered a 'digestivo' aka an Italian digestive drink (digestif). Italian digestivo are alcoholic after dinner drinks, usually served in a small glass, straight, as a shot.
A typical Italian diet consists of three meals in a day. The most common foods in the Italian diet include pasta, cheese, vegetables, olive oil, meats, and wine. Italians give a lot of importance to fresh ingredients. They use seasonal ingredients to prepare meals.
In Italy, lunch or il pranzo, is usually served and eaten from 12:30 to 2:30pm. Although, most Italians will eat their midday meal promptly at 1:00pm everyday. If not in a rush, Italians sit down and enjoy their lunch for at least an hour, either at home or in a restaurant or bar.
Italians eat the most pasta worldwide – about 60 pounds of pasta per person per year. Most Italians eat pasta every day but they keep their portions in check. A portion in Italy is about a cup and the meal includes a small portion of meat and a large portion of vegetables and salad.
Showering is most popular in Spain, Italy, Germany and France, where consumers tend to use shower products primarily in the morning to feel clean and refreshed.
Sugar is traditionally added to espresso by Italians, who invented the drink. Not all of them take it this way, but most of them do. Why? Because that's how you make it taste good.
The word for milk in Italian is latte (masculine, plural: latti).