02-09-2016
Carlo Cracco turned it into a television ad, with his father preferring his wife’s, Carlo’s mother’s cooking to his son’s. As we wait to see what will happen in Redzepi’s home, René in Copenhagen laughed at an even more ferocious episode. One of his three daughters was so bright he could only grin and bear it. Last Sunday, 28th August, first day of a completely revolutionised MAD, Arwen Levy, aged eight, immediately took the chance offered by the organisers, his dad above all, of presenting themes by sticking a paper on the notice board so that everyone could read the following: «Help! My Mom is a better cook than my Dad. Does any one else have this problem, I’m here to help». Let me repeat it: aged eight.
MAD has become a sort of food-related TED. The theme for 2016: Tomorrow’s kitchen. Two days of discussions, on 28th and 29th, without ever cooking, tasting, testing, rejecting or even just savouring some rare product from the Scandinavian Artic. Only ideas. Plenty of ideas. Even too many compared to the number of participants. The event was strictly ironclad, just 500 people, that’s it: 110 volunteers who worked for two months for a two-day event that held 350 people what with the speakers, around 50, it was hard to count them, and the paying visitors, some 300 more people each one of whom paid three thousand Danish crowns, around 400 euros, in April. And to feed them all, 40 cooks at work.
Cesare Battisti and Cristina Bowerman at MAD5 in Copenhagen
Everything was very free and very self-focused, with a dozen speakers announced in the programme from Jacques Papin, an 80-year-old French cuisine legend, to Carlin Petrini, to Spanish José Andres, much more than a chef, to American investor Eric Archambeau. All the others were only revealed at the beginning of the session, including the second and last Italian speaker, Marta Scalabrini, 32, chef (only for five years now) and owner (for two) of a place in Reggio Emilia, Marta in cucina. Her theme? “Should the kitchen be militarised or collaborative?”. She’s and advocate for collaboration in the kitchen, but knows she’s a black swan.
How about tomorrow’s kitchen? It will be more and more respectful of nature and people’s health; compassion will take the place of envy, this is what Petrini said; farmers and producers will be the chefs’ best friends; restaurants will depend less and less on reviews from guides and from the Internet and will speak to the public directly, without intermediaries; cooks will connect more and more, sharing news and knowledge; women will populate the kitchen in mass, overshadowing male colleagues. Please note: we’ll eat all sorts of things and the dear old Europe will be an important continent, but no longer a point of reference.
Then on Thursday 30th August everyone went his way and left the world of dreams for the real one.
Reviews, recommendations and trends from the four corners of the planet, signed by all the authors of Identità Golose
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born in Milan in March 1955, at Il Giornale for 31 years dividing himself between sports and food, since 2004 he's the creator and curator of Identità Golose. blog www.paolomarchi.it instagram instagram.com/oloapmarchi