“If you go in [Sic] Italy and ask for pecorina … you gonna get it”: Anglo-Italian linguistic and culinary non-hybridization. The strange case of Gino D’Acampo

Today, fusion cuisine is widespread, fashionable, and it certainly represents a unique example of a bridge across cultures. On the other hand, many chefs and tourists do not approve of it for the sake of certain values such as tradition and authenticity. This is particularly the case for Italian American food, for instance, with Italian haters claiming that such dishes as spaghetti with meatballs or fettuccine alfredo have nothing to do with Italian cuisine. This paper focuses on the strange and unique case of the Neapolitan chef Gino D’Acampo, an Italian chef in his mid-forties who opened his first restaurant in London when he was twenty-one. Today, Gino is a well-known TV star in Britain thanks to his strong and occasionally comical Italian accent and common Italian humour. However, he never misses a chance to demolish any attempts by his English guests or co-hosts to adapt traditional Italian dishes to English tastes. As he has stated in many interviews, his take is a declared ‘war’ on Italian cuisine hybridization. Nevertheless, this paper aims to illustrate that while Gino’s recipes shun hybridization, Gino’s funny idiolect and interlanguage, including Italian-English accent, code switching, and extensive use of loanwords are themselves intentional pragmatic strategies to bridge two cultures.