When Italy Meets the Smoker: How Global Food Traditions Are Reshaping Local Favorites

At Buckwalter's, we believe the best flavors come from borrowing a little genius from around the world—and making it our own.

There's a quiet revolution happening in kitchens, smokehouses, and food trailers across America. Chefs, pitmasters, and passionate food makers are looking beyond their own backyards for inspiration, reaching into the deep culinary traditions of other cultures and asking a simple question: What if we took that idea and put our own spin on it?

It's called culinary infusion, and it's one of the biggest movements in food right now. Industry surveys show that nearly half of food professionals point to global fusion flavors as the dominant direction shaping menus today. But this isn't about slapping random ingredients together for shock value. The best infusion cooking does something much more interesting—it respects the technique and tradition behind a dish from another culture, then reimagines it with local ingredients, familiar flavors, and a personal touch that makes it feel both brand new and completely at home on your plate.

Think about it. Korean BBQ tacos. Miso-maple brisket. Harissa-roasted local squash. Bao buns stuffed with pulled pork. These aren't gimmicks. They're what happens when cooks take the time to understand why a dish works in its original form, then translate that wisdom into something their own community will love. Restaurants that embrace this approach are seeing real results—higher customer loyalty, more adventurous diners, and food that people can't stop talking about.

Here in Lancaster, we've been doing our own version of this at Buckwalter's Deli and Smoke Haus. And one of our favorite examples? Bucky's Crispy Smoked Pork Roll.

The Italian Original: A Tradition Older Than Rome

To understand what we're doing with our porchetta, you have to appreciate where it comes from. Porchetta is one of Italy's most celebrated dishes, with roots that stretch back to the ancient Etruscans—we're talking 8th century BCE. The Romans adopted and refined it, slow-roasting whole seasoned pigs over open flames for festivals, celebrations, and feasts. For centuries, porchettari (the dedicated porchetta makers) have filled Italian town squares during festivals and fairs, slicing crispy, herb-infused pork from massive roasts and serving it on crusty bread to eager crowds.

The traditional method is beautifully simple in concept but demands patience and skill. A whole pig is deboned, generously seasoned from the inside with salt, pepper, garlic, and aromatic herbs—rosemary in some regions, wild fennel in others—then rolled, tied, and slow-roasted for six to eight hours. During cooking, the rendered fat is basted back over the meat, creating that legendary golden, crackling crust on the outside while the inside stays impossibly tender and juicy.

The Italian government has even recognized porchetta as a prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale—a traditional food product of cultural significance. The town of Ariccia, just outside Rome, has hosted an annual Porchetta Festival since 1950, and in 2011, Ariccia's porchetta earned EU Protected Geographical Indication status. The New York Times once named it one of the five best foods in the world. That's the kind of pedigree we're talking about.

So when you take a dish with that much history and craft behind it, you don't just copy it. You honor it by understanding what makes it great—and then you bring your own story to the table.

Bucky's Take: BBQ Meets Porchetta

That's exactly what we did. At Buckwalter's, we looked at the porchetta technique—the way Italians combine lean pork loin with rich, fatty pork belly, roll them together, and slow-cook them into something greater than the sum of their parts—and we thought: What if we infused this with the flavors and techniques we know best?

Instead of the traditional Italian herb blend of fennel, rosemary, and garlic, we season our porchetta with Buckwalter's own BBQ seasoning—the same blend that our customers know and love from our smoker. Instead of roasting in a conventional oven, we slow-cook and smoke the rolled pork loin and belly low and slow, letting wood smoke penetrate the meat and add that unmistakable depth that only a real smoker can deliver.

The result is something special. You get that classic porchetta experience—the crispy, crackling outside that shatters when you cut into it, giving way to layers of tender, juicy pork that practically melts. But the flavor profile is entirely different. It's smoky, savory, and seasoned with the bold BBQ character that defines what we do at Buckwalter's. It's familiar in the best way—you know you're eating great barbecue—but there's something about the construction, the way the belly wraps and bastes the loin as it cooks, that elevates it into something you've never quite had before.

That's the magic of infusion done right. You're not erasing the Italian tradition. You're having a conversation with it. The Italians figured out centuries ago that wrapping lean pork in fatty belly and cooking it slow was the key to pork perfection. We're just continuing that conversation with a smoker and our own seasoning in the mix.

Why This Matters for Local Food

This is what excites us most about the infusion movement. It's not about being trendy or chasing the latest viral food moment. It's about making your local favorites even better by learning from the best ideas around the world.

When a pitmaster in Lancaster County takes a technique perfected by Italian porchettari over two thousand years and translates it through the lens of American barbecue, everyone wins. You get a product that's rooted in real craft and tradition, but feels completely at home right here. It's the kind of food that makes you take a second bite and think, How have I never had this before?

At Buckwalter's, this philosophy runs through everything we do—from our bacon flights featuring internationally-inspired flavors to the way we approach every item on our menu. We're always asking: What can we learn from food traditions around the world, and how can we bring that knowledge home to create something over-the-top delicious for our community?

‘Bucky's Crispy Smoked Pork Roll’ is one answer to that question. A crispy outside, slow-smoked perfection inside, pork loin and belly working together exactly the way the Italians intended—only seasoned with Buckwalter's BBQ soul.

Come taste the infusion for yourself.