Mispelling recipes

French have a common habit for misspelling Italian recipes names: take any of the pizza recipes and in France you'll find many different ways of writing them.

As background information, I can say that just a few real original recipes do exist:

• Pizza Napoletana
• Pizza Margherita
• Pizza Quattro Stagioni
• Pizza Quattro Formaggi
• Pizza Capricciosa

Happily enough, in Italy there is a bill to safeguard the traditional Italian pizza, specifying permissible ingredients and methods of processing. Only pizzas which followed these guidelines could be called "traditional Italian pizzas", at least in Italy.

Italy has also requested that the European Union safeguard some traditional Italian pizzas, such as "Margherita" and "Marinara". The European Union enacted a protected designation of origin system in the 1990s.

Here's the links to the related websites: Pizzeria italiana tradizionale

But I am not writing this post to talk of ways of making pizza. My aim is to show how Frenchies misspell our recipes, by simply inventing words that do not exist!
Let's take for instance Pizza Margherita, many transcriptions can be found in the restaurant menus or even on recipes websites:

• Pizza Margarita
• Pizza Marguerite
• Pizza Marguarita
• Pizza Margharita
• Pizza Margiarita

etc, etc, etc...

This is very deceiving to me! I can't get how people starting-up a restaurant cannot have a look in an Italian dictionary to find the right word to use... Should I open a restaurant and put down a list of dishes, I would first check their correct spelling, especially for foreign recipes. How can a hungry customer looking for an italian meal trust a would-be Italian Restaurant that wrongly spells recipe's names?

The correct form is "pizza" and "pizze" in the plural. Not "pizzas".

"Napoletana" and not "Neapolitana" or "Napolitana" or "Napolitenne" or "Napolitaine".

"Salame" in the singular and "Salami" in the plural form.

And "Panini" is the plural form for "Panino": you can't ask for a panini!! But you can ask for a panino or for two panini. That's not that difficult, isn't it?

I really would appreciate Italian Restaurants in France mangling Italian recipes names. And maybe they could count on more eager customers to come and taste. In the meantime I won't hesitate to publish on my blog pics of funny Italian unbelievably misspelled menus that I will find during my stay in France. And I am sure you will enjoy...