It probably won’t shock anyone familiar with Katie Parla’s work to learn that Italian food is basically her Bat-Signal.
“If there’s a venue for speaking about the food and food culture of Rome, I’m doing it or eating a slice of pizza standing on the cobblestones watching it,” the Rome-based cookbook author, food writer and media personality told the Post-Gazette.
The next venue in which Parla will share her passion for Italian cuisine is Bar Marco in the Strip District. She’ll be on hand Saturday from 5-9 p.m. in support of her latest cookbook, “Food of the Italian Islands,” which contains “85 authentic recipes and 120 stunning photographs from the sunbaked beaches, coastal villages and rolling hillsides of Sicily, Sardinia and beyond.”
Though her Pittsburgh appearance is almost entirely sold out, anyone who still wants a signed copy of “Food of the Italian Islands,” a little face time with Parla herself and the opportunity to experience a traditional Italian aperitivo — aka snacks and wine either from or inspired by that region of Italy — can call Bar Marco directly or join an online waitlist accessible via katieparla.com.
“We’re super excited to host her,” Bar Marco owner and chef Justin Steel said in a statement. “The photos in the book really tell the story of what it is like on the Italian islands. We wanted to emulate those experiences and create a convivial, lively setting — just like if you were in a scene out of the book and enjoying snacks on a street there.”
Parla grew up in New Jersey and visited Italy for the first time as a sophomore in high school. She took a bus tour and found that “the food was atrocious,” which is what sparked her desire to one day experience Italy in a more authentic manner and “learn everything about the culture and food.”
Armed with little more than an art history degree from Yale University and a dream, Parla officially moved to Rome in January 2003 and began working as a high school teacher. She soon earned a master’s degree in food history and a sommelier certification in Italian wine, which allowed her to become more directly involved in Rome’s food scene and, as her influence grew, help “cultivate a positive culture” in the city’s culinary spaces.
These days, Parla writes about Italian food for Eater, co-hosts the “Gola” podcast with fellow Italian food aficionado Danielle Callegari and hosts “Katie Parla’s Rome” on Recipe.TV. She also regularly leads private walking tours around Rome that she described as “neighborhood immersions.”
Her media journey began in 2004 as a “fixer” on the Rome episodes of the History Channel caving series “Cities of the Underworld.” More recently, she was an on-screen expert for the CNN series “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” and in the Gabriele Bonci episode of Netflix’s “Chef’s Table: Pizza.”
“Food of the Italian Islands” is Parla’s seventh cookbook, and she recently completed her eighth such endeavor. Like her previous cookbook, “Food of the Italian South,” her deep-dive into the Italian islands is designed to highlight “the unique nature of the food there” while also “drawing comparisons between them” through commonalities in their cooking like the relatively small amount of fish they eat and their reliance on dried meats and legumes.
“These islands are [usually] way more about brief and intense summer tourism,” she said. “These food cultures have developed over the course of 8,000 years. That’s a long time.”
Saturday won’t be Parla’s first time sampling Pittsburgh’s Italian food community. She headlined a similar event in 2019 at DiAnoia's Eatery in the Strip District while promoting “Food of the Italian South.” That’s when she discovered Bar Marco, which clearly made a strong enough impression on her that she felt compelled to reach out and see if Steel and company wanted to be a stop on her summer book tour.
Though she doesn’t have any direct Pittsburgh ties, Parla is good friends with former Post-Gazette dining critic Melissa McCart and Rick Easton, who owned Bread & Salt Bakery in Bloomfield before relocating to the New York-New Jersey area in 2016. Those two collaborated on the recently released cookbook “Bread and How To Eat It,” and Parla said they’re both still “very enthusiastic about the food scene” in Pittsburgh.
“I’m really, really obsessed with urban planning, sometimes lack thereof,” she said. “Industrial repurposing, all these things that I think embody that area around Bar Marco and DiAnoia’s. It’s fun and interesting and there’s a lot of energy in Pittsburgh.”
In a few days, Pittsburghers will get to enjoy regional drinks like “Niente Panico,” a sparkling Catarratto wine, and a buffet-style assortment of food curated by Parla and Bar Marco that feel in line with “the spirit of the recipes in the book,” as Steel puts it. Those will include Sicilian-style chickpea fritters called “panelle”; the Sicilian pasta dish “pesto cu l’agghia”; “fregula,” a traditional Sardinian pasta; and “polpette di pesce,” which are Italian-style swordfish meatballs.
Attendees also shouldn’t be surprised if they end up having in-depth chats with Parla, who generally finds one-on-one interactions to be “much more useful than any type of lecture or talk.”
“My events and what we planned at Bar Marco are bringing the islands to your city,” she said. “Pour a little Sicilian wine on it, and you got a party!”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: August 23, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: August 23, 2023, 9:05 p.m.
