UNESCO has recognised that Italian food is more than pizza, pasta and gelato, adding the range and ritual of the famed cuisine to its list of intangible cultural heritage.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose government has championed "Made in Italy" products as part of her agenda, hailed the recognition on Wednesday that she said "honours who we are and our identity".
"Because for us Italians, cuisine is not just food or a collection of recipes. It is much more: it is culture, tradition, work, wealth," she said in a statement.
Pizza-making in Naples already features on the UN cultural agency's list of intangible heritage, as does espresso coffee.
Meloni's government proposed the much wider "cucina italiana" in 2023.
Culinary rival France in 2010 won UNESCO recognition for "the gastronomic meal of the French". That more celebratory affair, which begins with an aperitif and ends with liqueurs, includes four courses.
In Rome's Trastevere neighbourhood on Tuesday, the co-owner of the small "Da Gildo" trattoria, Leonora Saltalippi, said Italy's cuisine had centuries of mothers and grandmothers to thank.
"It is all a heritage born from the vision of women in the kitchen," the 43-year-old restaurateur told AFP.
They "have cooked for centuries and found, in the small things from the land and the poverty of the ages, a flavour that starts with oil and ends up in everything they touch," she said.
Pouring a delicate stream of olive oil over a plate of fettuccini with artichokes, she noted that across the country, every family had their own recipe, "with nothing written down".
Customer Tiziana Acanfora, 51, added: "What certainly makes the difference is the care and love with which things in general are prepared, not just the kitchen."
