Carbonara in a can? Chefs get shirty but Heinz is unrepentant

The US manufacturer is indeed selling the spaghetti dish in a tin – like cat food, as one Italian maître put it

Zoe Wood
Thu 29 Aug 2024 08.03 EDT

As the company behind spaghetti hoops, Alphabetti and Minions pasta shapes, Heinz is not afraid to take liberties with Italian cuisine. But after it had the audacity to put carbonara in a can, some fear the US manufacturer has gone too far.

The seriousness of the situation became apparent on Thursday morning when the company’s first pasta launch in a decade was discussed on BBC Radio 4’s agenda-setting Today news programme. The presenter Jonny Dymond asked whether it amounted to the “end of culinary civilisation” or the kind of “leap forward that brought us the joy of Pot Noodles and microwave meals”.

Alessandro Pipero, whose Michelin-starred Pipero restaurant in the heart of Rome has earned him the billing “carbonara king”, was firmly in the first camp. The chef appeared to recoil at £2 supermarket carbonara with a lengthy shelf life, quizzically asking: “Do you mean in a tin, like cat food?”

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Although now considered a staple Italian dish, spaghetti carbonara is a relatively recent invention. Its origins are debated but food writers suggest that it may have come from US troops in Italy and their daily supplies, which included some sort of cheese, bacon and eggs.

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