Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy

The show's premiere on February 14, 2021, had 1.52 million viewers, and its second episode, which aired on February 21, had 1.64 million viewers. The show's main viewing demographic consisted of adults between the ages of 25 and 54.[3]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has an approval rating of 71% based on 7 reviews, with an average rating of 5.30/10.[13] On Metacritic, the series has an aggregated score of 71 out of 100 based on 8 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[14]

John Anderson of The Wall Street Journal, wrote that Stanley Tucci is "not a performer given to grand gestures. So when he tastes the yolk-fattened spaghetti carbonara in a Roman restaurant, closes both eyes and spontaneously hugs the chef, it is the equivalent of fireworks over the Tiber", adding that the series contains a number of such moments. He concluded: "It’s a marvelously well-written show, briskly paced, and makes the rest of the food-TV competition as appetizing as last night’s mozzarella sticks."[15] Helen Rosner of The New Yorker described the series as "a good show, but not quite a great one. Its culinary discoveries ... are not new, and its gloss on the less glamorous aspects of Italian culture and history are rarely more than decorative". She described Tucci in the series as "a figure out of time", and wrote: "Like Tucci, Anthony Bourdain was rich in charisma and possessed unlikely sex appeal. But Bourdain the travel-show host served as a spotlight, fondly illuminating the people and places around him. Tucci is an electromagnet. Even when he’s in a crowd, he seems like the only person on the screen", adding: "the show is at its best when it stops fighting the desire to focus entirely on him".[16]

Sophie Gilbert, writing for The Atlantic, said that the series "presents itself as escapism, even as it half-acknowledges the reality of the pandemic", and wrote: "Some travelogues, such as the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, seek out underexplored destinations and culinary traditions. Searching for Italy takes its audience through the most obvious stops on the Italian itinerary (Rome! Milan! Tuscany!) while winking at the darker crevices of our imagination."[17] Caroline Framke, writing for Variety, criticized the series for choosing to air an episode filmed during a brief period of respite from the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy as the first episode. However, she praised Tucci for exploring Rome's less well-known locations and meals in the second episode, including "a fascinating detour into the inventive ways Italian chefs have transformed offal, or all the organs and bits of gristly meat that poorer Italians learned to work into delicacies."[9] Lucy Mangan of The Guardian gave the series 3/5 stars, writing: "Tucci is an utterly inoffensive guide throughout this sweet, light delizia of a documentary, but there is one moment with Coccia that nicely illustrates his one weakness – which is that he is slightly too muted, too self-effacing."[18]

Benji Wilson of The Daily Telegraph gave the series 2/5 stars, writing: "Tucci is a wonderful actor but a less engaging tour guide, largely because he’s as smooth and perfect as a gleaming burrata."[19] John Doyle of The Globe and Mail wrote: "You want more information than comes in a tourism brochure. Sometimes what Tucci offers, in his beautifully modulated voice, is simply bad, simplified history and worse social science."[20]