A Southern Thanksgiving in Veneto, Italy

By: Jenn Rice

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A Southern expat in Italy learns some traditions are just too good to let go

Growing up in Laurinburg, North Carolina, one of my favorite pastimes was roaming from house to house to maximize my Thanksgiving Day eats. The holiday wasn’t a big deal in my own household, which might be why I obsess over it now. Nothing makes one more homesick when abroad than Thanksgiving. But it’s my ride-or-die holiday, the one I spend days planning, working the menu until the spread feels perfect, decor included, if I’m at my own abode. Now that I live in Italy, like many of my Southern expat friends here, I work hard to keep the tradition alive.

Jenn Rice and husband — The author and her husband, Stefano.

No matter where I am, the list doesn’t change. Turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, stuffing (not my favorite, but nonnegotiable), and dressing. In Italy, you can’t find half of what fills an American grocery store, starting with Campbell’s soup for the casserole. I make mine from scratch now and actually prefer fresh French green beans to the canned version, though I’ll never say no to the classic for a hit of turkey day nostalgia.

Prior to living full-time in Italy, if I happened to be in the area during Thanksgiving, I made my way to Podere Aiole in Val d’Orcia, Tuscany, a farm owned by fellow expat Caroline Corvaglia. I first linked up with Caroline, also a Southern native, in Italy in 2020, and we became great friends after just one delicious and food-filled hangout. Thanksgiving was always perfect here. There was always a juicy turkey and all the important-to-us sides on the table, endless glasses of Brunello di Montalcino wine, and stunning Tuscany countryside views.

In 2025, I moved to Italy full time and hosted my own Thanksgiving for the first time, newly settled into Castelfranco Veneto. What started as a dinner for just me and my husband, Stefano, turned into hosting his parents, which was nerve-wracking—partly because I still don’t speak the language all that well, and the meal itself, buttery and rich to the point of excess, felt like it might come across as offensive to an Italian. Especially an Italian who’s never set foot in the Southern part of the US. (Italians keep foods separate on a plate, sides included, to respect the flavor, texture, and role of each ingredient— traditional Thanksgiving dishes ignore all three at once.)

It ended up being a huge success. I asked Stefano what his favorite side was, and he said the green bean casserole, no contest. “Goloso,” he called it, roughly translating to gluttonous. Little did he know the real version I grew up with is anything but fresh.

Italians eat in courses, always. Anti-pasto, then primi, then secondi, then dolce. Pasta is always primi, eaten on its own, never served as a side. “To have it all on the plate for Thanksgiving was good,” Stefano says now.

Mac and cheese gets no such mercy. “It seems like a dish of cacio e pepe that hasn’t trusted itself,” he says, which might be the most Italian review of American food I’ve ever heard. (Unpopular opinion for someone living in one of the best food regions in the world: Most of the butter here does nothing for me. My workaround is Ferrowine, a shop in town that carries French butter, which I rubbed all over the turkey before it went in the oven.)

Turkey isn’t common in Italy, especially not in the sense of a grand Thanksgiving feast. And Italian turkeys don’t show up shrink wrapped. They arrive fresh, feathers and all, which means my prep now includes tweezers for the plucking. It’s more work, but it might be the best turkey I’ve ever had. Finding a turkey was its own saga, driving all over our area to find one in stock. We finally landed on a grocery store where a man named Giancarlo arrived to deliver meat to the butcher counter. The butcher asked what size turkey we needed and told us to come back the next day at 3 p.m. No receipt, no number, nothing on paper, just trust, a practice I’ve come to appreciate about Italians. We showed up the next day and there he was with a beautiful tacchino (turkey) in hand, exactly as he’d promised.

I’ll keep working to preserve my holiday favorites. But I’ve figured out a few rules to follow along the way: In Italy, tiny ovens are a fact of life. Sweet doesn’t mean the same thing here that it does back home. And you can always wear your slippers to dinner if you’re hosting in your own home, which feels like its own kind of luxury after cooking all day. At the end of it all, it’s the tradition that makes the effort worth it. Green bean casserole is its own kind of love language when you’re missing home.