Identità Cortina: let’s start!

Tonight, at 7.30 pm at bar Embassy in Corso Italia, the press conference presenting the first edition of Identità Cortina will take place: a pilot edition that will be focused, between Saturday and Sunday, on two dinners and a picnic. The first on the 12th, at restaurant Da Aurelio, at 2,200 metres in the Giau pass, with Gigi Dariz and Mauro Uliassi, the second at almost 1,700 metres at El Brite de Larieto close to the Tre Croci pass, where dishes will be signed by Riccardo Gaspari and Massimo Bottura.

And on Sunday 13 we’ll all stay outdoors. At El Brite, from noon onwards, we will once again be charmed by Bottura, Dariz and Gaspari, as well as Alfio Ghezzi and Alessandro Gilmozzi, Mauro Brun and Bruno Rebuffi, all seven of whom will be focused on the savoury side of the menu while the sweet one will see Massimo Alverà and Alessandro Favrin involved.

Identità Cortina is born today but starts from afar because the mountain represented everything in my father Rolly’s life. He was born in Trentino and eternally tied to his mountains and his snow, no matter where he was in the world, so much so that as his son, I was constantly bombarded by questions on skiing and contests, on climbing and on the courage to climb high up. I’ve always admired the borderline between the mountaintops and the sky. However, perhaps because I was born in Milan, I can get lost even by looking at the horizon over the sea, that line that seems to be endless, where water and sky seem to blend into each other.

Mountains can be scary on many occasions, just like the sea during a storm. But they have something more, the constant difficulty of living at a high altitude, perhaps in the lateral valleys that the sun only illuminates a few weeks in summer. Cortina is an exception, it has few equals as for beauty, so much so it almost doesn’t count. It’s like taking Venice as an example for a city by the sea.

Identità di montagna, in Cortina, was born absolutely by chance. One morning, early in January, I woke up at dawn with the light crawling behind Nuvolau and Cinque Torri without yet illuminating the basin. I took a picture to share on twitter, it was intercepted by Ludovica Rubbini, a restaurateur at El Brite, who wrote to me and asked me if I knew the agritourism of her husband’s Riccardo’s family. I said no, even though Francesca Barberini had been recommending it for two winter seasons.

Within three hours I was having lunch at El Brite and now, seven months later, here we are with Identità for a weekend that today is a seed and I hope will be much more in the future. Mountains are more than just skiing, walking and mundane activities. And food activities include much more than three dishes, two wines and a beer. Except they are not as visible as those from other regions. The mountain is in fact little inhabited and it cannot have the same amount of worldwide ambassadors as pizza (Naples) or risotto with bone marrow (Milan).

Moreover, no matter how rich in jewels, locals often are soon fed up with eating always the same things they know from childhood and when they go to the restaurant it’s easier for them to look for sea fish. The precise contrary to tourists who want typical food by all means and are often tricked with imported products and when they eat bresaola, the meat is from South America.

Identità Cortina would like to be a point of reference for mountain wines, cheese, products and knowledge.