All roads lead to Faenza

Capital of artistic ceramics, this town with 60K inhabitants in Romagna, halfway between Bologna and Rimini on the Via Emilia, was historically invaded by international artists and students and today is setting a sort of culinary record. Indeed an extraordinary percentage of excellent culinary creative projects have established themselves: from Postrivoro to O Fiore Mio, from restaurant FM con Gusto to CinemaDivino and up till Dispensa, these are all original formats that have comfortably and satisfactorily found a place within a range of a few kilometers.

According to Enrico Vignoli, one of the founders of Postrivoro, it is indeed the fertile cultural microclimate, including an international touch plus the typical attitude of Romagna (hard workers) that inspires to open a business in Faenza. For Carlo Catani, president of CinemaDivino, today's sparkling attitude is simply the result of the seeds sewn a few years back. When, even before food became a religion, in Faenza they were already starting to invest in high quality and excellence: cultural and culinary professionals such as Valter Dal Pane (creator of projects such as Cena Itinerante and Osteria della Sghisa), or Giorgio Melandri (curator of Enologica which, before arriving in Bologna established itself over here) or Roberto Olmeti (owner at La Baita, a place with a remarkable wine collection), were the sparkle for this fire.

Fabrizio Mantovani, who has just revamped his love for the town by creating a new restaurant format (FM Market, a café, snack bar, market that looks like it's landed on Piazza del Popolo from some metropolis in Northern Europe) believes this sewing begun even further back, to when he united his careers as musician and chef and came to Faenza to play at Clandestino (Morena Andalo's live club with the restaurant ex Angusto now a vegan place called Arbusto), a contemporary and unique restaurant in the local scene, around which friendships were born and from those ideas and then collaborations.

The city is both so small you can't avoid contact and contamination, and sufficiently large and welcoming to create broad and openminded projects. So connections are automatic: if you dine at Postrivoro the bread is made by O Fiore Mio, and you'll surely find a copy of Dispensa to browse, Morena Andalo will be in the kitchen helping out Fabrizio Mantovani who'd come by just to say hi. Or as in the case of Fame Con.creta, an event created by Vignoli, Mantovani, Catani and myself uniting fine dining and ceramic art which last May had some Italian chefs (from Scabin to Oldani, to Stabile and D’Amato, Tokuyoshi and Kondo) discuss with some ceramic artists from Faenza at Teatro Masini.

Even I chose to establish Dispensa in Faenza, in the independent and untouched province: it is itself a history yet to be fully told, with plenty of food and people worth discovering. While writing this, I found out that Sebastiano Caridi won talent show Il più grande pasticcere. Do you know where he works and lives? At Pasticceria Fiorentini. In Faenza. 

Here's some things to do in my town.

Museo Carlo Zauli
via della Croce, 9
+39.0546.22123

Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche
viale Alfredo Baccarini, 19
+39.0546.697311

Distretto A/Cena Itinerante
via Sarti, 14
distretto.a@gmail.com

CinemaDivino
via San Silvestro, 168
+39.366.5925251

Clandestino/Arbusto
viale Alfredo Baccarini, 21a
+39.0546.681327

Trattoria Ca’ Murani
Vicolo Sant’Antonio, 7
+39.0546.88054

O Fiore Mio
viale Mura San Marco, 4/6
+39.0546.667915

La Sghisa
via Giuseppe Maria Emiliani, 4
+39.0546.668354

Fm Ristorante + Fm Market
corso Giuseppe Garibaldi, 23
+39.0546.24720

La Baita
via Naviglio, 25c
+39.0546.21584

Pasticceria Fiorentini
corso Giuseppe Mazzini, 173
+39.0546.22664