We are Italian cuisine

«Identità Golose allowed us to move ahead! It pulled down every frontier. Italian cuisine, without Identità, would be less interesting. You have the proof in front of you: despite the 39°C, the best chefs in the country are here: it is something very important» says Massimo Bottura, chef number 2 in the world, closing in perhaps the most effective and flattering way the event that summoned inside Sala Reale in Stazione Centrale, Milan, the best of Italian haute cuisine for the presentation of the book celebrating, together with the 100 chefs that changed Italian cuisine, also the organisation that has accompanied this growth, that is to say Identità Golose. Drawing from its archive, with over a decade of work behind, this brand signs this book titled “100 chef x 10 anni”, now available in all bookshops, offline and online.

We’ve already spoken at length about this book here. The event in Milan was a chance to celebrate its publication and its protagonists too. After all, behind this nice book there’s the work of those who wrote it and curated it (Paolo Marchi, first of all, for the general coordination; myself, Carlo Passera, and Annalisa Cavaleri for its content, Francesca Brambilla and Serena Serrani for most of the photos, Giulia Corradetti for the editorial coordination), but most of all there’s the work of the one hundred chefs, the tip of the iceberg of the Italian restaurant scene which had the strength to present itself in a new way over the last decade. Drawing from its past and its extraordinary regional tradition, it has looked towards the future.

This is what Marchi explained during his speech, after the introduction by Chiara Lorenzutti of R101 and pressed by the questions made by Paolo Colombo of La7: «I don’t like celebrations because you always need to look ahead, convinced the best is yet to come. This sort of encyclopaedia of our contemporary cuisine was created for this very reason: to present a world which has changed from January 2005 to February 2015 – that is to say in the decade between the first and the latest edition of Identità Milano. We documented the past but giving lots of space also to what can come in the future».

It is no chance that all the minds forming our cuisine were reunited in the Sala Reale. The over celebrated chefs (from Bottura to Oldani, from Alciati to Feolde, from Lopriore to Scabin, from Perbellini to Sadler, to Portinari) and the new generations that have stood out or are standing out (besides the youngest of them all, “Parisian” Simone Tondo was not present, though justified, there were Bartolini, the Costardi brothers, Panero, Klugmann, Abbattista, Aprea, Battisti, Ferrari, Roncoroni, Milone, Negrini & Pisani, Varese, Meroi, Dal Degan, De Cesare, Faccani, Croatti); the masters of new pizza (Pepe, Bosco, Ciro Salvo) and of natural cuisine (Leemann, Salvini, Cicioni); the “Roman” chefs (Apreda, Genovese, Monosilio), and those who make the Italian province a great place such as Gilmozzi, Grassi, Ghezzi, Iacobucci, Ciotti, and even Sardinian Petza.

“100 chef x 10 anni. I 100 chef che hanno cambiato la cucina italiana”, Mondadori Electa, July 2015, 416 pages, hardcover. You can buy it here.