Seven of Italy's restaurants

Only seven restaurants in Italy - including a roadside pork-sandwich cart - made it into the European chapter of Newsweek magazine's top 101 restaurants in the world. The newsmagazine, based in the United States, collaborated with online news outlet the Daily Beast, to ask top chiefs around the world to compile a list for each continent. From Italy, two of the seven top picks are in the Tuscan town of Cortona, made famous by Hollywood's 'Under the Tuscan Sun' romance flick. One of the choices from Cortona is a porchetta truck. The best spaghetti alla carbonara, according to Tim Love, Lonesome Dove Western Bistro chef of Fort Worth, Texas, is to be found in Florence's Caffe' Duomo. Jamie Oliver, famous for his work in Britain to support better nutrition for youth, raved about a restaurant in downtown Bari which specializes in deep-fried polenta. "There is a very old woman - I think she has just one tooth - and she sits on a low stool with a pile of polenta that looks like a stack of gold bar," Oliver says in the Newsweek listings. "In front of her is a cauldron of hot oil. She clanks up one of the bars, deep-fat-fries it, and serves it in a paper cone with sea salt. Amazingly delicious". Italian chefs were left scratching their heads over some of the choices, questioning whether street vendors should be lumped in with fine-dining establishments.