In December 2025, Italian cooking was officially registered as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. I heard the news while going about my everyday life in Milan. Although it should have been a momentous occasion, the city was surprisingly quiet about it, and things just seemed to go on as usual.

Milan is known for being a city of economics and fashion. It definitely moves at a fast pace, with new things coming out all the time. Yet, it’s surprisingly conservative when it comes to food. The food that’s lined up at the markets and grocery stores where I stop on my way home from work is more habitual and traditional than fancy, and recipes are still rooted in old-fashioned cooking methods that have been passed down in families for generations—not on recipe books that attempt to create innovative new flavors.
Looking at the vegetable section in the supermarket, you can easily see what season it is, how the weather has been that year, and whether the crops did well. The types of vegetables you find in the market quietly determine what’s on the menu. Cooking is less a form of self-expression and more of a fixed relationship with the environment.
The business-occupied Milanese typically keep things simple on the dinner table. When they don’t have time for meals, they’re very simple—and when they do, they put a little extra effort into them. During hot summer days, it’s not uncommon to see people buying precooked pasta, meat, or fish that they don’t have to heat from the prepared dishes section and putting it straight on the table. Foods tied to religious ceremonies, seasons, or calendar events are naturally incorporated into their dishes, and you realize that tradition is less a conscious endeavor and more something that’s interwoven seamlessly into daily life.
Thinking back, Italian cuisine already got an Intangible Cultural Heritage registered with “the Art of Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo” in 2017. The designation wasn’t for pizza itself, but the way the culture brought together artisans, community, work, and daily life. I guess getting recognition for Italian cuisine in general just seemed like a natural extension of what was already there.
This time, UNESCO wasn’t recognizing typical Italian foods like pasta and pizza, but the cooking methods that have been passed down in families for generations, regional differences, seasonality, and time around the dinner table. Even though I live in a big city like Milan, I naturally understand in my daily life why Italian food is regarded as an important cultural heritage worth preserving.
As a Japanese person, it does feel a little like when Japanese food was recognized by UNESCO. It wasn’t the advanced techniques or formal presentations that were recognized, but the way food is so closely interwoven with daily living. In that way, Japanese and Italian cuisine are quite similar. In both cases, it’s something that’s quietly been handed down as part of everyday life, and only later became a cultural heritage with a name.
Italian cuisine didn’t suddenly get valued because it was registered by UNESCO. Nothing will be done differently in the kitchens of Milan because of it. Italian food is already fully integrated into the lives of the Italian people. The recent decision just puts the word “cultural heritage” to what is already a fact of life, so that we finally have a way to express what has been there this whole time.