Paris is worth a mortar

Just after celebrating in Genoa, on Saturday March 29th, the winner of the World Mortar Genoan Pesto Championship, namely 87 year-old Alfonsina Trucco, Roberto Panizza is already starting the long march towards the next edition, that is in March 2016, given his event happens every two years. In two days’ time, on Saturday 12th, the date is set in Paris, where it is always nice to go because they know how to enjoy life.

A nice programme, with 30 enthusiasts who will compete (together with their mortars) until we will have a winner, the first to access to the finals in Genoa, in 2016. A jury of nine experts, including us of Identità and, most of all, those who have created the Parisian event, will judge them. First of all Alessandra Pierini and with her Stefano Palombari, Alain Cirelli and Panizza.

Here a perfect piece to discover everything about the nine judges. Now I’m keen on reminding, through the landlady, Alessandra, working at 15 in rue Rodier, in the ninth arrondissement, the many Italians who have left Italy behind in order to live in France. And they know they are Italians, they do not camouflage themselves, they don’t pronounce their surnames in the French way, pretending they were born on the other side of the Alps. They are ambassadors of Italy in the country of total grandeur, such as Pierini, owner of Epicerie RAP, where the acronym stands for Ristorante Alessandra Pierini.

Alessandra , born in Genoa, has long been working as a restaurateur, as she herself recalled in a nice letter, with a fun premise: “Were I to write on Bronte Pistachio it would be easier than writing about myself.

“Even as a child, I had a passion for food, inheriting an excellent gastronomic culture from my family and taste and a curiosity for all that comes from the countryside and the sea, onto the dish, from my mother.

“I’m a young Genoan who has moved first to Marseille and then to Paris. The turning point arrived in 1993 when I decided to open, in the South of France, a shop selling Italian products with a restaurant room. An adventure that lasted 17 year, during which I tried to import the best of Italy’s production.

“In 2010 I had the decisive desire to offer Parisian gourmets our tasty products: I sold the place in Marseille and moved to the capital, where I opened RAP ristorante, that is to say Ristorante Alessandra Pierini, and RAP épicerie. A beautiful success and always counting on my strength alone. At the end of 2012, another professional leap: I sold the restaurant and concentrated all my energies on the boutique selling Italian flavours.

“I like writing about cooking. I adore spreading and sharing my passion for what’s good, knowing who is behind each pack of pasta and who has packaged the Piennolo tomatoes. Our country is very full of gastronomic richness and we need ambassadors who would speak about these and make these products accessible to the public, sharing their passion.

“I look for tradition, trying to project it into a more contemporary dimension, creating a link between the different periods. One of the first things I have learnt to cook is risotto, a product I adore is olive oil. I would like to bring to Paris all the best that the Italian territory and craftsmanship can produce and create a great feast to taste everything”. A beautiful dream.