The Renaissance of Italian Cuisine

Although I’ve been a part of every day of the food festival, Identità Golose, the final day was perhaps the best of all. It is difficult not to share everything I have seen, heard and tasted with you. What was said and cooked by each chef can be read almost everywhere online – most of it being posted in real time online. Therefore to reflect on the opportunity I was given, and tell you all about what is happening in the world of gastronomy.

Today traditions, regional recipes, local products, seasonality of raw materials, chemical and physical composition of the food used forms the basis of modern cooking. But to go further, experimenting with new techniques helps create new tastes, textures shapes and contrasts, it is important to discover new cultures, find new meeting points. Thanks to this contamination so many chefs have been inspired by their travels to play with tradition and find new culinary approaches.

Continuous research, study without end, and a touch of humility is required to bring these flavors to new audiences. Restaurants proposing haute cuisine today are real laboratories of ideas, experimentation, and concentration (wisdom not wildness, as Bottura calls it).

What we are now experiencing is a real renaissance in Italian cuisine. Massimo Bottura is not the only one to think so. Even Morendo Cedroni has already oriented his next menu in this direction, “In our country”, he says, ” we have finally become aware of our past, that, filtered by contemporary thought, amplified by human biodiversity and through the sharing of knowledge, we will give birth to a new Italian cuisine”.

The work of great personalities in the world of cooking is taken up for the most part by research, study and experimentation. This research is being capitalised on in other areas such as the hospital Cristo Re di Roma, which will receive 400 meals per day that have been developed by chef Niko Romito and his staff which balance nutritional intake at a low price using the most recent techniques and products. Special focus is being paid to the reduction of waste, and the reuse of substances. Today’s chefs are looking to operate in an ethical manner, and to reduce the environmental impact.

Passion and fascination for cooking but mostly a lot of energy is being used into research which has noend. There is no point of arrival, there is no definitive answer but only an evolution of an evolution.