Like many Italians, I was raised to love good food and tell stories about it. Here’s one. My nonna, dad, and aunt crossed the Atlantic on a boat from Italy in 1953. Dad was four and my aunt was six. They ate well on that journey: pasta, minestrone, eggs, and bread that was crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.

When they docked in Halifax, Nova Scotia, an attendant handed my aunt a sandwich—a slippery slice of ham between two pieces of mushy white bread. She started crying. “It’s cake!” she sobbed, knowing on some level that the culinary standards she had enjoyed so far had been left behind on the boat she stepped off of.