In October 1935, the dictator Benito Mussolini’s shock troops flooded the shores of Abyssinia, seizing Ethiopian cities and townships to establish Italian settler colonialism in East Africa. This project examines the interplay of East African and Italian culinary culture from the Fascist period to the present day, tracing the legacies of colonialism to contemporary kitchens. All five senses engage through the materials: marketplace maps, children’s cups and dishes, and breastfeeding photography demonstrate how the regime embedded political ideology in everyday actions like cooking and eating. Today, we see Mediterranean migration unfolding in reverse: Eritrean, Ethiopian, and Somali citizens navigate the dangerous and often deadly waters to seek employment and political asylum, bringing foods and foodways from the Horn of Africa to Southern Europe. Neo-Fascist and far-right parties such as Fiamma Tricolore and Lega Nord have framed these cultural shifts as an assault on Italian identity and nativist foodways: Sì alla polenta, no al cous-cous.” Faced with the return of hypernationalism in Europe and in the United States, what do we do now? Interweaving individuals’ recipes with the collective politics of urban planning and restaurant legislation casts this dilemma in the concrete details of daily life to explain what is at stake in the migration of culinary culture.