Correction Appended

IN the realm of perfume, one man’s pudding is the next man’s tar. 

That the reaction to a fragrance can be visceral, and personal, is not news to Luca Turin, 
人對香氣的反應可能直通臟腑，感覺因人而異。這對科學家兼香氣專家盧卡‧杜林來說不是新聞。
who over the years has inhaled and critiqued hundreds of scents. In assessing them, Mr. Turin, a scientist and fragrance expert, makes no attempt to hide his partisanship.

 

 

He describes Attrape-Coeurs, an amber violet perfume from Guerlain, as “an intense radiant Wurlitzer organ blast of rose violet and iris notes,” but paints a bleaker picture of Creed’s Love in White: “If this were a shampoo offered with your first shower after sleeping rough for two months in Nouakchott, you’d opt to keep the lice.”
他形容「情感陷阱」這種嬌蘭推出的混合琥珀色、紫色的香水是「一台光芒萬丈的沃利策風琴轟出玫瑰紫色與彩虹色的音符」，但是他提到格烈特的「白色戀情」時卻說：「如果這是你連續兩個月在諾克少（西非國家茅利塔尼亞的首都）輾轉不寐之後頭一次沖澡要用的洗髮精，你可能寧願繼續讓頭髮養蝨子。」

Readers react to such colorful snippets from his new book, “Perfumes: The Guide” (Viking), written with his wife, Tania Sanchez, with varying degrees of admiration and respect. Mr. Turin is, after all, a dominant voice in a chorus of critics airing their views in books and magazines and, increasingly, on the Web. 
與太太塔妮雅‧桑奇茲合寫「香水指南」一書的杜林，是在書本雜誌以及越來越多網站上發表意見的眾多香水批評家裡首要的角色。

In the last half-dozen years, their opinionated chatter has become catnip to consumers, some of whom stay up until the wee hours, reading about new scents on sites like makeupalley.com, which Mr. Turin characterized as “a 24-hour pajama party.”

That chatter, however, is also the bane of the fragrance industry, 
不過，這些關於香水的閒談，已對香水產業造成危害。
which, when it comes to romancing products, has traditionally claimed the last word.

“Perfume is the only art in which there’s never been a true word spoken,” Mr. Turin said in an interview, with a directness that has made him a thorn in the side of the industry. In his book, he recalled that as little as a year ago, Le Labo, a small New York perfumer, refused to send him samples, its makers sneering that “writing about perfume is like dancing about architecture.”

Today reviewers on Web sites and blogs like aromascope.com, scentzilla.com, boisdejasmin.com and perfumeposse.com have rendered that argument moot. Increasingly, critics like Robin Krug of Now Smell This, who said she has around 10,000 hits a day, and Chandler Burr, who reviews fragrance for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, cultivate a following by speaking directly to consumers, many of whom are aspiring connoisseurs themselves. 
(紐時版本:

Today reviewers on Web sites and blogs like aromascope.com, scentzilla.com, boisdejasmin.com and perfumeposse.com are fierce, responding to certain fragrances with rapture or, as often, with venomous contempt.
如今，aromascope.com、scentzilla.com、boisdejasmin.com與perfumeposse.com等網站與部落格的香水評鑑者的言辭都很殘酷，他們可能對某些香水的反應達到狂喜狀態，但也經常表現出充滿惡意的輕蔑。)

Often those shoppers collect, amassing as many as 200 bottles and vials in their homes. And many have learned to distinguish among olfactory families like fougère (fern) and gourmand (edible smells), and even to pronounce chypre (SHEE-pr, roughly), a classification based on citrus and woody notes.

As critics, they are fierce, responding to certain fragrances with rapture or, as often, with venomous contempt. A perfume like Poison, from Dior, is especially polarizing to bloggers, many of whom are stay-at-home moms or professionals in other fields.

 An enthusiast on Now Smell This described Poison as “a warm, luxurious velvet blanket draped across a satin settee. On the same site, the perfume was assailed as “a railroad spike through the brain.” 
nows-mellthis.com網站上有位香水迷形容迪奧的「毒藥」是「蓋在緞布靠背長椅上溫暖奢華的絲絨毯子」。但是在同一個網站上，有人痛罵這款香水是「插穿腦子的鐵道釘子」。

Black Orchid from Tom Ford was praised as “melting cupcakes on hot skin.” But a detractor called it “aged Romano in a carnivorous orchid hothouse.”

When they wish to be especially withering, bloggers designate a scent as a “scrubber,” the kind of smell you can’t wash off fast enough. 
當部落客想要表現得吹毛求疵，就會把某種香氣稱為「刷子」，亦即那種你一碰上就巴不得立刻洗掉的味道。

Their enthusiasm, though, can be infectious. Online scent aficionados have become a force to be reckoned with in the $2.9 billion high-end fragrance industry, which has had a slight decline in sales since 2007. Their interest in mostly unadvertised, limited-distribution brands has helped drive niche sales in 2007 to $253 million, a rise of 19 percent, said Karen Grant, the senior beauty analyst of the market research firm NPD. Niche brands have doubled in volume since 2005, accounting for 9 percent of sales, Ms. Grant said.

Not surprisingly, these critics’ uncensored comments have been anathema to the Estée Lauders and Cotys of the world, industry giants that have relied almost exclusively on advertising and glowing magazine commentary to spread their message and spur sales. 
不足為奇的，這些批評家未經審查的評論已成為雅詩蘭黛、科蒂等香水業巨擘的眼中釘。

“No question, the industry people are unnerved,” said Rochelle R. Bloom, the president of the Fragrance Foundation, a trade group. “I often get calls from executives pleading, ‘Can’t you do something about all this chatter.’ ”
香水產業團體「香氣基金會」主席羅歇爾‧布隆說：「無庸置疑，業界人士深受其擾。很多公司主管打電話求我說：『你們就不能管管這些閒話嗎？』」

Yet traditional marketing does not address consumer desire to learn about the dizzying number of annual fragrance introductions — up from 300 ten years ago to more than 1,000 last year, according to NPD.

Kelly Shimoda for The New York Times

 

Kelly Shimoda for The New York Times

 

“In their marketing, mainstream perfumers have lost control, and that puts a lot of pressure on them,” said Allan Mottus, the editor of The Informationist, a cosmetics and fragrance trade magazine. He added that mass and high-end brands, as well as fragrance producers and suppliers like Givaudan and Symrise, are “just waking up to the news that they can’t own the customer.”

The explicit advertising for Tom Ford’s new men’s fragrance, which shows an amber-colored bottle wedged between a woman’s naked thighs, will likely have no impact on Richard Saja, an artist and embroiderer who stood inhaling fragrances at Bergdorf Goodman on Saturday morning. “I don’t care about perfume advertising or the bottle it comes in,” Mr. Saja said. “For me perfume is a visceral experience,” one that is deepened, he added, by scanning sites like sniffapalooza.com, an organizer, with several New York retailers, of a weekend of sniffing and sampling.

“Three years ago, this was a world I hadn’t explored,” he said. “But now the Web has demystified so much of the world of fragrances for me.”

Mr. Saja was among some 200 customers swarming the Bergdorf fragrance floor that day. Shoppers from London, Berlin and Piscataway, N.J., poked their noses into bottles, sniffed scent strips and inhaled deep draughts from decanters. Some parted with as much as $200 for a flacon of Sycomore, a new offering from Chanel.

Enthusiasts included Christine Jelley, the chief executive of a surge-protection gear maker. Swayed by blogs, she was intent on exploring new violet-scented offerings from Serge Lutens and Annick Goutal. “When someone becomes rhapsodic about a scent,” she said, “I want to see what they’re seeing in it.”

Kevin Saunders, an art therapist circling the Lutens and Jo Malone counter, is an occasional reader of basenotes.net and Now Smell This. Mr. Saunders carries with him on an iPod a list of scents he has read about, some to be sampled, others to buy. “At the least,” he said, “those blogs may prompt me into trying something.”

And there are signs that the industry is responding to Mr. Saunders and his online cohort. “Today you see more bloggers being invited to traditional press events, and a greater awareness among executives of emerging forms of media,” Jenny B. Fine, the editor of the trade journal WWD Beauty Biz, noted.

Marianne Diorio, a spokeswoman for Estée Lauder, acknowledged as much: “In the beginning we were nervous about the blogs. As with any new media, there were mixed emotions.” Pointedly, she added, “Now we could never think of launching a fragrance without contacting the bloggers.” The company engages in dialogues with critics, she said, and advertises some of its fragrances on sites like Now Smell This.

Firmenich, a producer and supplier of fragrances, operates osMoz.com, which made its debut in 2001 and claims 300,000 members. In recent months, the company has encouraged readers to share information and to rate fragrances, its own and others, Julien Levy, the site’s marketing director, said.

Commentators on coty.com prompted Coty, which makes fragrances by David Beckham and Jennifer Lopez, among others, to think of reissuing its greatest hits, scents like Emeraude and L’Origan, said Stephen C. Mormoris, a senior vice president of global marketing. 
科蒂公司全球行銷資深副總裁史蒂芬‧摩墨瑞斯說，在coty.com網站上發表意見的人，逼得製造大衛‧貝克漢與珍妮佛洛佩茲等人掛名香水的科蒂公司考慮重新推出「綠寶石」、「牛膝草」等旗下最熱門的幾款香水。

Such developments cannot come soon enough for Tania Sanchez. In “Perfumes: The Guide,” she chided that the perfume industry “hasn’t yet figured out the benefits or relaxing control.” She told of a prominent blogger threatened with a lawsuit by a perfume company because she had deemed its product only “O.K.,” and “a little disappointing.” 
這可是桑奇茲女士迫不及待的發展。她在「香水指南」裡批評道，香水業「還搞不清楚放鬆管制的好處」。他提到一位知名部落格主人遭到一家香水公司的訴訟威脅，只因她認為這家公司的產品「尚可」而且「讓人有點失望」。

“When a sleek luxury goods company unleashes its lawyers on a suburban mom for not liking their new fragrance,” Ms. Sanchez wrote, “we know the world is changing.”
桑奇茲女士寫道：「一家時髦精品公司會因為市郊一位媽媽不喜歡他們的新香水，就派出律師對付她，世態炎涼由此可見。」

PU’ER, China — The sky is nearly cloudless, the breeze is bracing, and the tea plantation where Yao Kunxue works resembles a giant green amphitheater absorbing the last rays of a setting sun. 
天空幾近無雲，和風令人神清氣爽，姚昆雪（譯音）工作的茶園看似一座吸取著夕陽餘暉的巨大綠色露天劇場。

 

The tea itself? No thanks, he says. He grows it — what he calls industrial tea — but he does not drink it. 
至於這茶呢？他說心領了。他種這茶，稱它為產業茶，然而他不喝。

The rolling hills of China’s southern Yunnan Province are the birthplace of tea, anthropologists say, the first area where humans figured out that eating tea leaves or brewing a cup could be pleasant. Today tea farmers preside over large plantations, but they want their tea the way their forebears consumed it: brewed from wild leaves, and preferably from ancient trees in the jungle. 
人類學者表示，中國大陸南部雲南省綿延起伏的山區是茶的誕生地；人類最早在這裡發現，吃茶葉或泡茶喝是種享受。今天，茶農種植大片茶園，然而他們喜歡以先人的方式品茶：以野生茶葉沏泡，茶葉最好採自深山密林中的老樹。

“It has a fragrant smell,” Mr. Yao said of his favorite, harvested from trees at least a century old. “And when you swallow there’s a sweet aftertaste.” 
姚昆雪最愛採自樹齡百年以上老樹的茶葉。他說：「它有股香氣，下喉後會回甘。」

From relative obscurity a few decades ago, tea from Yunnan, especially Pu’er, has become a fashionable, must-have variety in the tea shops of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. Surging demand for Pu’er — often advertised as wild tea even if it is from the plantations — has made farmers here rich and encouraged entrepreneurs to carve out more plantations from jungle-covered hillsides. 
雲南的茶葉幾十年前還沒沒無聞，如今卻成了香港、上海、北京茶舖裡當紅的貨，尤其是普洱地區產的茶。普洱茶需求激增，商家常把茶園種的說成野生茶來賣，普洱的茶農因而致富，企業家則紛紛在密林覆蓋的山坡闢建更多茶園。

Ninety percent of the 23,000 tons of Pu’er tea produced last year was grown on plantations, officials say. Local residents seem more than happy to send it to distant locales. They complain about its hard edges — too bitter — and the chemicals that are regularly sprayed on the plants to repel bugs, viruses and fungus. 
官員指出，普洱去年產茶2萬1000公噸，其中九成產自茶園。當地人似乎樂得把茶遠送到外地。他們嫌這種茶太苦，也不喜歡茶農為了清除蟲子、病毒、黴菌而經常噴灑的化學藥劑。

“The pesticides come through in the taste,” Mr. Yao said. 
姚昆雪說：「喝起來會有殺蟲劑的味道。」

Here, tea has never been something bought at the market; it grows in the backyard, like blueberries in the woods of Maine. 
在普洱，人們從不上市場買茶；它就長在家家戶戶的後院。人們把馴化的茶樹修剪為樹籬，以利採收。在野外，它們會長得有如地中海橄欖樹，葉子則更大更多。

Domesticated tea plants are trimmed into hedges to make harvesting easier. In the wild, they grow to resemble the old and gnarled olive trees of the Mediterranean but with bigger and more abundant leaves.

Peng Zhe, deputy secretary general of the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, a tea-growing district here, compares the wild tea to fine vintages of Bordeaux or Burgundy.

“To appreciate Pu’er tea is similar to enjoying wine,” said Mr. Peng, who also leads the local tea promotion board. “You need to understand the different areas where tea grows. The fragrance is different from one mountain to the next.”

Jungle tea, as some here call the harvest from wild tea trees in more remote areas, has been picked by villagers for centuries, and in imperial times it was sent to the emperor. But only recently have the profits started rolling in for the wild-tea pickers, who have divided forests of tea trees along ancestral lines and are increasingly selling to larger concerns. 
部分普洱人把採自較偏遠地區野生茶樹的茶葉稱為密林茶，當地人已經採摘數百年。直到最近，採收野生茶才開始有錢可賺。他們沿著先人的地界劃分茶樹林，並角將茶葉賣給規模比較大的公司。

“Twenty years ago no one had the idea that tea could become so valuable,” said Chen Jinqiang, an official in Xishuangbanna. 
西雙版納的官員陳金強（譯音）表示：「廿年前，沒有人想得到茶會變得這麼值錢。」

A compressed disc of Pu’er tea that sold for 3 yuan, or about 40 cents, two decades ago now can easily go for 200 yuan, about $25, today, Mr. Chen said.
陳金強表示，廿年前，一塊經過壓縮的茶磚售價人民幣三元或大約40美分，現在可以賣到人民幣200元或大約25美元。

“People here always had enough to eat,” he said. “Now they have a lot of cash.” 
陳金強說：「這裡的人一向不愁吃。現在更是荷包滿滿。」

In Manmai, a hilltop village a few dozen miles from China’s border with Myanmar, the wealth from the Pu’er tea boom is trickling down. The village headman, Zha Pagu, has never traveled more than 30 miles from his house during his 60-plus years (he said he could not remember his exact age), but his home now has a solar water heater, and his neighbors are upgrading their wood and thatch homes with modern building materials like tiles and concrete. 
在距緬甸邊界只有幾十公里、位於山巔的曼邁村，普洱茶不斷帶進財富。曼邁村出入一向得靠步行；現在則有一條蜿蜒而上的泥土路正在興建。

Until recently the village was accessible only by foot. A dirt road that winds up the mountain is now under construction, but the village remains relatively isolated.

Zha Ge, 19, a tea picker who like the other villagers is Lahu, a small ethnic minority here, said he had never met a foreigner before. But he understands the value of outsiders’ keen interest in his tea trees. Picking tea has generated enough cash to buy a 20-inch television, a motorcycle and a copy of his favorite foreign film, “First Blood,” the first in the Rambo series. 
十九歲的查戈（譯音）是採茶工人，和其他村民同屬雲南少數民族拉祜族。他說，他以前從沒見過外國人，現已經瞭解外人對他的茶樹有興趣所衍生的價值。

In March and April, the peak tea-plucking season, Mr. Zha Ge can make up to $1,000 a month, far more than what the factory workers in eastern Chinese cities make stitching blue jeans and assembling iPods. 
每年的三、四月是採茶的旺季。每逢這個時候，查戈一個月的收入可達1000美元，遠高於華東城市工廠裡的工人。

Unlike those workers, who live in smog-choked cities with blackened, polluted waterways, the tea pickers here work among trees that overlook a pristine mountain range that would not look out of place in a Chinese scroll painting. In October, when the tea trees flower, the air is filled with the sweet aroma of tea blossoms. “It smells just like honey,” Mr. Zha Ge said. 
那些工人必須忍受令人窒息的城市煙霧。普洱的採茶工人則大不相同，是在可飽覽原始山林景致的茶樹間工作。

Teenage girls are the most sought-after tea pickers — their fingers move more quickly, local residents say — and they can harvest as much as 110 pounds of tea leaves a day.

Yet for many families in the remote reaches of Yunnan, tea-picking remains outside the realm of commerce. It is so tightly intertwined with their daily lives that it is a routine household chore, like putting the laundry out to dry.

Yue Ye, 38, the mother of two teenagers in Chui Hao, a village inhabited by members of the Dai ethnic group, says children begin drinking tea when they are 3 to 5 years old. Families consume it first thing in the morning, after lunch, after dinner and late in the evening.

They pick the tea from ancient trees atop a hill near the village. “The people who planted them are long dead,” Ms. Yue said.

She cooks the leaves in a wok, “massages” them by hand and leaves them in the sun for a day.

Tea from Pu’er was popular around the region in ancient times: historians describe “horse tea trails” that radiated from Pu’er, the main trading center for the tea, into northern and eastern China, Tibet and beyond.

The recent surge in popularity is attributed to newly affluent, health-conscious Chinese who believe that Pu’er tea lowers cholesterol, cures hangovers, helps fortify teeth and trims away fat. 
普洱茶近年來竄紅與開始注重養生的中國大陸新富階級有關。他們認為，普洱茶可以降膽固醇，消除宿醉，鞏固牙齒，還可以消脂。

Shops in Beijing or Shanghai advertise that their Pu’er tea has been aged for several decades, which is said to give the tea a more mellow taste. But as with many things in China it is hard to tell the real from the counterfeit. 
北京與上海的商家經常聲稱，他們陳售的普洱茶已有數十年的歷史。一般認為，如果長期保存，普洱茶會更香醇。不過陳金強表示，碰到有人說他的普洱茶已有十年以上的歷史，他不會輕易相信。他說：「我看，多半是假的。」

Mr. Chen, the government official, said he would be very wary of claims that tea has been aged more than 10 years. “Most of it is fake, I think,” he said.

Nopporn Phasaphong, a tea trader in Bangkok whose family has been in the business for three generations and who travels regularly to Pu’er, says she, too, is skeptical about the authenticity of much of what is labeled jungle tea from Pu’er. Very little genuine jungle tea is on the market, she says. “Everyone who sells it will tell you it comes from old trees,” she said. “But it’s like buying rubies. You have to know something about it.”

Mr. Yao says he can taste the difference between teas grown on plantations and those from wild trees. But in what may be a metaphor for freewheeling China today, he acknowledges that nonconnoisseurs often get hoodwinked.

“If you don’t know Pu’er tea,” he said, “people will cheat you.”

六、新竹地區或交通時間在一個小時內可達的顧客，我們鼓勵您偕同您的朋友自行開車來取貨。

只要訂貨一件(兩盒)以上，我們招待與您同車一起來取貨的朋友每人一球GELATO( 最多四球)，

不限口味每球價值60元哦。
七、營業時間：週一到週六上午１０點到晚上９點
八、冬令營業時間：週一到週六上午１2點到晚上7 點30分

Correction Appended

ROME — Last month, Gambero Rosso, the prestigious reviewer of restaurants and wine, sought out Rome’s best carbonara, a dish of pasta, eggs, pecorino cheese and guanciale (cured pig cheek; for the aficionados, pancetta is not done) that defines tradition here. 
上個月，權威的餐廳與美酒評論家甘貝羅‧羅索找尋羅馬最好吃的奶油培根義大利麵，一盤義大利麵、雞蛋、義大利羊奶起司、煙燻豬腮幫肉，成就當地的招牌傳統菜式。

Skip to next paragraph

Enlarge This Image

Marco Di Lauro for The New York Times

Chef Nabil Haj-Hassan shows his award-winning carbonara pasta in the kitchen of the Roscioli Restaurant in Rome.

Enlarge This Image

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A night in Trastevere, the ancient artisans quarter of Rome, now a center for bars and restaurants.

In second place was L’Arcangelo, a restaurant with a head chef from India. The winner: Antico Forno Roscioli, a bakery and innovative restaurant whose chef, Nabil Hadj Hassen, arrived from Tunisia at 17 and washed dishes for a year and a half before he cooked his first pot of pasta. 
亞軍是L’Arcangelo餐廳，主廚來自印度。獲得冠軍的Antico Forno Roscioli是一家烘焙坊和創意十足的餐廳，主廚納比爾‧哈山17歲時來自突尼西亞，在下廚烹煮生平第一鍋義大利麵之前，洗了一年半碗盤。

“To cook is a passion,” said Mr. Hassen, now 43, who went on to train with some of Italy’s top chefs. “Food is a beautiful thing.”
「烹飪是一種熱愛，」現年43歲的哈山後來曾向一些義大利頂級名廚學藝。「食物是美好的事物。」

Spoken like an Italian. But while much of the rest of the world learned about pasta and pizza from poor Italian immigrants, now it is foreigners, many of them also poor, who make some of the best Italian food in Italy (as well as some of the worst and everything between). 
說話語氣像是義大利人。從前，世上其他地方的人大多從貧窮的義大利移民處初識義大利麵和披薩，現在卻是外籍兵團在義大利燒得一手道地好菜，當中許多人一樣很窮。

With Italians increasingly shunning sweaty and underpaid kitchen work, it can be hard now to find a restaurant where at least one foreigner does not wash dishes, help in the kitchen or, as is often the case, cook. Egyptians have done well as pizza makers, but restaurant kitchens are now a snapshot of Italy’s relatively recent immigrant experience, with Moroccans, Tunisians, Romanians and Bangladeshis at work. 
義大利人對於在汗流浹背且報酬不足的廚房工作愈來愈敬而遠之，現在餐廳都得用外勞洗碗、在廚房幫忙，最常見的是掌廚，鮮少例外。埃及人的披薩一直做得不錯，現在的餐廳廚房則有摩洛哥人、突尼西亞人、羅馬尼亞人和孟加拉人打理，可以大概反映義大利晚近外來移民的狀況。

That fact itself may not be surprising: On one level, restaurants in Italy, a country that even into the 1970s exported more workers than it brought in, now more closely mirror immigrant-staffed kitchens in much of Europe.
事實本身或許不足為奇：某個程度上，義大利即使在1970年代初，出國工作者仍多於前來工作的外勞，當地的餐廳現在不過是更準確反映出歐洲大部分國家餐廚員工皆是外勞的實況。

But Italians take their food very seriously, not just as nourishment and pleasure but also as the chief component of national and regional identity. Change is not taken lightly here, especially when the questions it raises are uncomfortable: Will Italy’s food change — and if so, for the worse or, even more disconcertingly, for the better? Most Italian food is defined by its good ingredients and simple preparation, but does it become less distinct — or less Italian — if anyone can prepare it to restaurant standards? Does that come at some cost to national pride?
可是義大利人非常嚴肅看待自己的食物，在營養與口腹之欲之外，更是民族和地域認同的主要成分。這裡的人對於改變並未等閒視之，尤其是當引起的問題令人不快：義大利食物是否會改變─倘若如此，會變得更壞？甚至更讓人尷尬的是，變得更好？大多數義大利食物的特色在於好的材料和簡單的準備過程，但是否變得沒那麼獨特─或者沒那麼義大利─是否任何人調理義大利食物都能達到餐廳的水平？如此是否有損民族尊嚴？

“If he is an Egyptian cook, nothing changes — nothing,” said Francesco Sabatini, 75, co-owner of Sabatini in Trastevere, one of Rome’s oldest neighborhoods. His restaurant is considered one of the city’s most conservative, serving classic Roman dishes like oxtail, yet 7 of his 10 cooks are not Italian. 
「如果廚師換成埃及人，煮出來的菜色不會有任何改變─完全沒差，」位在特拉斯提弗列區的沙巴提尼餐廳的老闆之一，75歲的法蘭西斯科‧沙巴提尼表示，該區是羅馬歷史最悠久的街坊。他的餐廳被視為羅馬市區保存原味能力數一數二的餐廳，供應牛尾之類典型羅馬菜餚，但十個廚師當中有七位不是義大利人。對沙巴提尼而言，廚師的出身不是問題，而是訓練過程（他餐廳的師傅得當五年學徒），外加保存義大利的烹飪傳統。

For Mr. Sabatini, the issue is not the origin of the cook but the training — his chefs apprentice for five years — and keeping alive Italy’s culinary traditions, which he defines as “the flavors of your mother’s kitchen.”

“That’s why I’m here,” he said. “If not, I’d just go to the beach.”
「這是我為何留在這裡，」他說。「假如不是為了這個，我就到海灘去了。」

But in a debate likely to grow in the coming years, others argue that foreign chefs can mimic Italian food but not really understand it.
但是在一個未來幾年可能繼續升高的爭論中，另一方主張外籍廚師也許能複製義大利食物的色香味，卻不能真正了解義大利美食的精髓。

“Tradition is needed to go forward with Italian youngsters, not foreigners,” said Loriana Bianchi, co-owner of La Canonica, a restaurant also in Trastevere, which hires several Bangladeshis, though she does the cooking. “It’s not racism, but culture.”
「傳統需要由義大利的年輕人推向前，而非外國人，」卡諾尼卡餐廳的老闆之一羅莉安娜‧畢安奇表示，她的餐廳也位於特拉斯提弗列區，還請了好幾個孟加拉人，但是她自己掌廚。「這不是種族歧視，而是文化差異。」

While much of Italy’s best food is prepared at home, Ms. Bianchi despairs at the difficulty of finding people to do the same in restaurants. (There is even a greater shortage, experts say, of Italian waiters.) “It’s tiring and the hours are very long,” she said.

But it has been an undeniable boon to Italy’s new immigrants. Twelve years ago, Abu Markhyyeh, a young Jordanian, finished an apprenticeship with a Neapolitan pizza maker, borrowed money from his Italian mother-in-law, then opened his own pizzeria in Milan, Da Willy, after his nickname here.

He did well, in part because he made the pizzas bigger but kept the prices low. Now Mr. Markhyyeh, 41, presides over an untraditional pizza empire. He has 11 restaurants in Milan, 4 in Jordan, 2 in Cyprus and franchises in Dubai, Beirut, Sharm el Sheik in Egypt and now in Shanghai. 

Despite this success — and thousands of loyal Italian customers — he said he has never felt fully accepted. “Italians say they aren’t racist, but then they say to me that in Milan, I have found America,” he said, referring to a slightly insulting expression for finding success without really working for it. “It makes me feel lousy.”

Skip to next paragraph

Dave Yoder for The New York Times

Abu Markhyyeh, 41, a Jordanian, the owner of the pizzeria Da Willy, has 11 restaurants in Milan, 4 in Jordan, 2 in Cyprus and franchises in Dubai, Beirut, Sharm el Sheik in Egypt and in Shanghai. Despite his success, he says he has never felt fully accepted.

Qunfeng Zhu, 30, a Chinese immigrant who opened a coffee bar in Rome’s center, has had a similar experience even though he makes an authentic espresso in a classic Italian atmosphere (overlooking a few bottles of Chinese liquor). 
30歲的中國移民朱群峰（譯音）在羅馬市中心開了一間咖啡吧，在標準的義大利環境調配正統的義式濃縮咖啡。「有些客人上門看到老闆是華人，掉頭就走，」他說。但是他說過去這幾年，類似情形比較少發生，是義大利開始接受其他種類食物的一個跡象。

“Some people come in, see we are Chinese and go away,” he said.

But in the last few years, he said, that happens less frequently, one sign that Italy is opening up — if slowly — to other kinds of food. Twenty years ago it was hard to find much beyond the occasional Chinese restaurant. Now the choices are broader, especially for Asian food like Japanese or Indian.

“We live in a globalized society — there are so many people represented in our city,” said Maria Coscia, the commissioner of Rome’s public schools. So much so that last year the city began a program of serving a meal from different countries once a month. But many parents complained loudly.

“The first time we did it, the menu was Bangladeshi,” she said. “That was a problem.”

As a result of the complaints, the program was tweaked slightly and now at least one dish in four on those days — even grade-school students eat well here — will remain Italian. Now it is largely accepted, though the program’s Web site includes this reminder for the still wary: “In the total of the 210 school days, when lunches are served, only eight days are dedicated to the menus from other countries.”

With this mixing of cultures only in its early days, there seems to be no major shift in Italian cuisine, even if foreigners are doing the cooking more and more. Unlike in France, where foreign flavors have blended well over time with native ones, attempts here at some fusion of Italian and other cuisines have not caught on. There is, as yet, no equivalent to curry in Britain.

Still, there seems some leakage. Food experts say that foreign chefs, here and there, add spices not often used in Italy, like coriander and cumin. Couscous and vanilla are no longer novelties.

But there is a question whether those changes, so far subtle, are happening as a conscious effort to be creative, or simply foreign chefs reverting to the flavors they know from home.

Pierluigi Roscioli, a member of the family that runs the restaurant that won the best carbonara award, said there was a risk that tradition would slowly erode if Italian chefs did note oversee those foreign ones who had less training. 
皮耶路易基‧羅斯奇歐尼家族經營的餐廳，曾贏得最佳奶油培根義大利麵獎，他說，義大利廚師若不好好監督訓練較少的外籍廚師，義大利美食傳統有慢慢流失之虞。

“Without supervision, they tend to drift toward what is in their DNA,” he said. “When it’s by choice, it’s great, but not when it happens because someone isn’t paying attention.”
「沒有監督，他們比較會順著自己的DNA去發展，」他說。「如果是出於選擇，那很好，但如果是因為某人沒有注意而發生，就不好了。」

Given the current pace of change, he and other experts estimate that cooks in low- to middle-level restaurants in Italy may be almost entirely non-Italian within a decade. But that trend coincides with another, in which Italians are showing a rejuvenated interest in the best of their own food, as shown by the popularity of groups like Gambero Rosso, which publishes a magazine and books reviewing wine and restaurants, and the Slow Food movement, which emphasizes fresh and local products.

Four years ago, the International School of Italian Cooking opened in Parma, arguably Italy’s best food city, and is attracting a new generation of Italian chefs interested more in high-end cooking than the home-style cooking in local restaurants that has made Italian food popular around the world.

Its executive manager, Andrea Sinigaglia, said it was possible that Italian restaurants would soon divide into two camps, with elite restaurants staffed by Italian chefs, and trattorias and restaurants aimed more at tourists run by foreign chefs.

But with Italy changing, he said, its food will inevitably change, too, though his school is partly aimed at keeping the basics — local products, fresh ingredients, simplicity in preparation — intact.

“We cannot defend a recipe,” he said. “We cannot stop progress. We can indicate, pinpoint, what are the real important things. And the rest is creativity.”