More than 17 million Americans can claim Italian descent. The majority of them have origins in southern Italy, and they settled mostly in the Northeast, California, Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, and Illinois. It would be hard to find a corner of America, though, where you wouldn’t encounter locals with Italian names — or, more to the point, be able to eat some version of Italian-American cuisine.

The cooking of our various Italian-America communities, over the decades, has evolved into a real cuisine, heavily inspired by the old country but playing by its own rules. Unpretentious, generous in proportion, vividly flavored, and almost always irresistible, what we have come to think of as simply “Italian” food is an essential part of the American culinary landscape.