Berardo Paradiso chewed slowly, his fork halfway to his mouth.
“Basil and pepper, they are a very good boyfriend and girlfriend,” he said, gazing at the two sauces around the fillet of red snapper with potatoes and string beans. “Naturally, the potato is very much the witness of the wedding.”
But something wasn’t right. “It’s like being in a concert, and you have the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra playing,” he said. “It is still a great orchestra, but there is somebody sleeping next to you and making little snores. That is what the string beans are.”
Mr. Paradiso, 72, has been the head of the New York SoHo chapter of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, the Italian Academy of Cuisine, for more than a decade. He addressed his criticism to 30 or so Accademia members (“accademici,” so designated by demure green, red and white pins affixed to their lapels, which differ in design according to rank) and their guests, who gather each month to review an Italian restaurant. For the 66th anniversary of the Accademia this summer, they dined at Osteria 57, a pescatarian restaurant in Greenwich Village.
Functionally, the Accademia is a supper club. But its members dine toward a common end: They rate each restaurant, and notify the organization’s headquarters in Milan for a Michelin-style guide published annually. Instead of stars, they award “temples,” in keeping with their columned logo.
Members, who need not have any culinary training or experience, assess each dish not only for its gastronomic merit, but also for the food’s adherence to what they regard as the authentic cooking of Italy — the motherland, for some, the grandmotherland, for others.
“Many restaurants that call themselves Italian — they do not create real Italian food,” said Mr. Paradiso, a businessman and engineer who lives in Great Neck, N.Y., and left Italy in his late 20s. “If somebody doesn’t know the difference between good and not good, he thinks it is the real Italian cuisine. That’s where we intervene. We protect against the imitations.”
Francesco Genuardi, the consul general of Italy in New York, said the accademici “focus on Italian cuisine as an essential part of our culture. It’s not just a colorful part of our life, but a part of our tradition, our history, our economy.”
Despite its international reach — 7,800 members in more than 40 countries — the Accademia is only one of many culinary organizations in Italy.
“The reputation of them in Italy is, I would say, next to zero,” said the food writer Elizabeth Minchilli, the author of “The Italian Table,” who has lived in Rome for more than three decades. “It seems like an expat type of thing. I have never, ever, ever heard of them.”
Founded by Milanese intellectuals in 1953, the group was recognized as a cultural institution by the Italian government in 2003. This is not unusual in Italy: A consortium founded in 1934 vouches for authentic Parmesan, and a nonprofit association founded in 1984 safeguards Neapolitan pizza.
When the Accademia started, “it was a fantastic operation,” said Laura Lazzaroni, the editor in chief of Food & Wine Italia. “It was the result of a group of very smart people from the arts, literature and journalism, who had a sincere love and appreciation for food, and knew food.”
But today, she said, “It’s not something that people are aware of that much anymore.”
The SoHo accademici take their work seriously. Each pays $250 in annual dues, as well as the cost of dinners.
They see themselves as guardians of Italian cuisine as it splinters to adapt to tastes abroad. Mr. Paradiso, who is also a lifetime member of the Accademia’s board in Italy, says Italian restaurants in the United States can be divided into three categories: the real thing; Italian-American restaurants, where the cuisine comes from ancestral family memories; and imitation Italian places, the lowest rung.
Many lovers of Italian food would strongly disagree with Mr. Paradiso’s taxonomy.
But over the course of the anniversary dinner, several accademici insisted that New York has only a handful of true Italian restaurants. Il Gattopardo, an 18-year-old restaurant across West 54th Street from the Museum of Modern Art, is a clear favorite; they awarded it an eight on their scale of five to nine, modeled after the grading system in Italian public schools.
They also awarded an eight to San Carlo Osteria Piemonte in SoHo, to 10 Corso Como in the seaport district and to Via Vai Astoria in Queens, among others.
They have never given a restaurant a nine. “It is very difficult to reach the sublime moment of having a dish, or a meal, that puts you in a different level,” said Mr. Paradiso, who recalled that the only time he personally gave a nine was after he ate a lobster in Italy; he nearly wept as he chewed. “A nine requires many, many things that I don’t think you can find in the United States.”
Every chapter is led by a “delegato” like Mr. Paradiso. The SoHo group, which Mr. Paradiso opened with the blessing of headquarters in 2005, has 36 members. The other local delegation, simply called the New York chapter, started meeting in the 1950s and has 34 members. Some attendees were from the New Jersey chapter, and accademici meet regularly in Boston, Houston, San Francisco and several other U.S. cities.
The SoHo chapter does not review New York’s many red-sauce Italian-American restaurants. “For us, an Italian-American restaurant is a foreign restaurant. It is a different cuisine,” Mr. Paradiso said. That style derives from the era when Italian immigrants, coming from scarcity, turned to the abundant cheap cuts of meat in their new country.
At the restaurants the chapter reviews, “you’re never going to find veal covered with Parmesans,” said Joseph Scelsa, president of the Italian American Museum in Little Italy, and an Accademia member.
Many nations, like France and Spain, go to great lengths to promote and preserve their culinary heritage. Italy, hoping to capitalize on its ancient culture and reputation for the good life, also seeks to uplift its cuisine abroad. The New York region is already sympathetic ground, thanks to a large Italian-American population.
“The Accademia is one of the many tools we have to project our Italian diplomacy,” said Mr. Genuardi, the consul general. “Our food culture is one of our strongest weapons.”
Before the chapter’s recent meal started, waiters navigated a phalanx of cheek kisses. Most of the members were middle-aged. The men wore well-tailored suits and, often, shirts with their initials monogrammed near their rib cages, an old-time Italian style. The women wore elegant outfits and statement jewelry.
To become an accademica, two members must nominate the candidate to the head of the chapter, who then sends that person’s credentials to the Accademia’s president in Milan, Paolo Petroni, who has the final say. The applicant must be educated, with a college degree (it’s called an academy, after all, Mr. Paradiso said), and two members must vouch for her good taste.
Allison Farraye, 24, the chapter’s youngest member, is one of six members with no Italian heritage. Some others see this a strength: Sentiment doesn’t corrupt her sense of taste.
“I’m pretty analytical when I think about the food, since I don’t have the same nostalgia,” Ms. Farraye said.
As the guests ate, they debated: Was the risotto cooked 30 seconds too long? Was it too buttery? Peaches and burrata and pistachios — does that combination pay homage to an Italian summer meal, or does that take too many liberties? Interpretations are allowed — it doesn’t need to be your nonna’s sauce — but the spirit of the cuisine must be preserved.
“To me, there has to be a feeling of Italy in the dish,” said Aurelie Paradiso, 42, Mr. Paradiso’s daughter, an architect and an accademica. “It has to remind us of home.”
At the end of the nearly three-hour dinner, the chef, Riccardo Orfino, thanked them for attending. Then the accademici gathered up the notes they’d taken. Groups of four or five had given each course a rating, and then rated the restaurant.
Ultimately, they awarded Osteria 57 an eight. Excellent, but with a caveat.
“In my opinion, it was very well done,” Mr. Paradiso said, “but I would not put the string beans next time.”
Mr. Scelsa nodded in agreement, though he had no complaints. “It’s not an Olive Garden,” he said, pushing back his chair. “That’s for sure.”
