Forum, good first take

Maurizio Martina, Minister for agricultural policies: “This is a sui generis invitation but one needs to start somewhere to speak with you chefs. Here there’s the best, not everything, yet if one needs to choose between doing and not doing, it is best to do”.

Martina 2: “The Forum della Cucina Italiana must be looked at as a stable working tool between institutions and the restaurant industry. It’s an opportunity, something concrete on which to work in order to leave a structural heritage after the Expo”.

Martina 3: “I wish that the Forum will be later institutionalised by the ministries, animated by the institutions. I imagine the Ministry of Agricultural Policies together with the Ministry of Cultural Goods or the Ministry of Economic Development or for instance that of Education, these interactions are essential to work. With you, to begin with, we start with this project. If we speak about promotion abroad, we need to get the Ministry of Foreign Affairs involved. The important thing is having someone who drives”.

Martina 4: “We want to create a stable working tool, independent of Martina and Paolo Marchi, independent of yourselves and which could be potentially used by others too, in the future. For now, the next date will be in July at Expo in Milan and will see the participation of 3 or 4 ministers”.

This is what Minister Martina said when greeting the almost 30 chefs (and not only chefs) who accepted his invitation to give life yesterday, on Monday 2nd March, to the first (and certainly not last) Forum della Cucina Italiana, this time in Rome. After that, everyone was invited to say what is not working in the restaurant industry and what could be done so that the many happy moments that chefs, sommeliers, restaurateurs enjoy can form a strong, compact and winning system, independent of what is trendy today and will be forgotten tomorrow. All this in a world in which egos are limitless, so much so that too many recalled comedian Paolo Rossi when he said that on the t-shirt of Milan’s player Dejan Savicevic there wasn’t written number 10 but IO, me.

Perhaps for the first time, the references made were concrete, not the usual wining about that guy losing a star and the other one being chosen for a project abroad, without having the skills, of course, following the trite script according to which a journalist or an administrator are good only if they praise or choose me, and only me. Among the numerous notes I chose one, of Niko Romito, chef and patron at Reale Casadonna in Castel di Sangro, Abruzzo, because it gives a good idea of the forum: “We’re like small Ferraris, institutions need to give us a highway, not mountain roads, so we can run”. In the same conditions as the global competition, I’d add.

After two and a half hours of discussion and confrontation, the Minister’s closing. Here’s the most important part: “We’ve had a real meeting here, not a banal round of speeches. The first question is a political one: who are you? These operations only move forward if you are the ones to conduct a new proposal. A simple power operation is not capable of independently moving this proposal of yours forward, YOU need to make a proposal and help us to move it forward.

“We’re in the most important phase, if not now, when? From individuality to a collective fact, the Expo is an important opportunity. You can do more than a regional administrator. The political bet allowed by Expo is to allow to identify chefs as protagonists. We need to move from private choices to public choices”. The next date will be this July.