The 5 Foods Giada De Laurentiis Always Brings Back From Italy

Italian-American chef Giada De Laurentiis received her culinary training from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and she has been starring in cooking shows, authoring cookbooks, winning Emmys, and opening restaurants ever since. America trusts her when it comes to all things Italian — she was born in Rome, after all (via Food Network).

And naturally, the bubbly Roman-turned-Calfornian returns to her roots pretty much every chance she gets (you'll find her on her Instagram in every city from Bologna to Milan to Puglia), whether it's for her many professional endeavors or simply to relax and revisit childhood memories. And who wouldn't? Italy is the land of great food and lovers of great food, and De Laurentiis is no exception.

It's pretty much an unwritten rule that when you go to Italy, you don't come back home empty-handed. So what favorite foods does De Laurentiis always bring back with her? She shared her go-tos with Bon Appétit — and the question isn't why she chose these Italian goodies, but how she ever narrowed it down to five. Let's break down Giada's "edible souvenirs."

Giada De Laurentiis' first stop is one of her favorites to shop for: dolce (aka candy). In Bon Appetit's TikTok video, she says her whole family loves candy, so bringing home these sweet treats is a must. Italy's sweet shops are brimming with all kinds of colorful hard candies, liqueur-filled chocolates, candied fruits, and other unique confectionaries that range in flavor from mint to anise to limoncello; she's got a lot to choose from.

Next up: pasta — obviously. "Everywhere I go when I'm in Italy, I get inspired," De Laurentiis explains in the video, which is why she visits pasta shops to glean inspiration from not just the fresh pasta but even the colors and logos on its boxes. In fact, there's one dried pasta brand that De Laurentiis can't stop using: Setaro. It's back to something sweet for De Laurentiis' third go-to item: cioccolato. At an Italian chocolate shop, De Laurentiis goes right for something called "gianduiotto", which is a small individually wrapped chocolate hazelnut treat.

Now that candy and chocolate are covered, cookies are the final sweet to grab. Specifically, De Laurentiis loves Amaretti cookies, which are light, airy, crinkly Italian cookies made with a deliciously sweet almond extract. They come in various flavors, and often in very pretty cookie tins — perfect for packing in that suitcase. Last on De Laurentiis' list is malva tea from an herb tea shop, a tea that comes from an herbaceous plant in Italy known for its healing properties.

It may be a little-known fact that Giada De Laurentiis lived in Italy until she was 7 years old, and she didn't speak any English when her family moved to America. "My family takes their culture very seriously," she told Insider in 2019, "So even when we moved to the US, we still lived very Italian lives. We spoke Italian at home, we only ate Italian food."

Therefore, it probably shouldn't come as an enormous surprise that the items De Laurentiis continues to bring back with her from Italy have memories attached to them from her childhood in Rome. For example, she told viewers on TikTok that she used to find gianduiotti under her pillow as a kid whenever she lost a tooth, and that malva tea is her mom's favorite. It turns out that nostalgia has a lot to do with De Laurentiis' Italian must-haves — and isn't that true for so many of our own favorite foods?