Bottura, FAO and RefettoRio

During Expo 2015 in Milan, Massimo Bottura gave life to Refettorio, with a capital “R” only at the beginning. Now this project changes country and continent, from Italy to Brazil, from Europe to South America, and even the way it’s written: RefettoRio, with a second capital “R”, since in less than a month Bottura will bring his soul to Rio too, where on 5th August the Olympics are to begin.

Together with the chef from Modena and his wife Lara Gilmore there will be different realities involved too, as stated during the presentation at the FAO in Rome on Friday when together with the chef the speakers on stage included Brazilian Josè Graziano Da Silva, general director at the FAO, David Hertz, chef and founder of Gastromotiva in Brazil, Maurizio Martina, ministry for Agricultural Policies, and Giovanni Malagò, CONI president, who was happy because the chef from Modena accepted to be a testimonial in Rome’s candidacy for the 2024 Olympics.

Words, ideas, projects and dreams. Fine dining is also about society and fighting against hunger in the world, about ethics and aesthetics going hand in hand, about 2030 as a goal for all the movements animated by FAO, or Gastromotiva and Food for Soul or the foundation desired by the Bottura’s to bring Refettorio to every corner of the world. To New York, for instance. The film shown by Massimo and dedicated to Milano 2015, in which Ferran Adrià recalls how a seemingly poor ingredient is better than low quality but expensive caviar was also beautiful.

In Rio, RefettoRio will offer food in Lapa, surrounded by favelas. Nobody even knows how many people live there, men, women and children, not fictional characters. Say half a million, it might be too low. On this occasion it will be open for 45 days (yet it won’t be a project limited to the Olympics, it will continue its activity even after its end) and the chefs who will work in turns, will use the food left over in the Olympic village, just like they did in Milan with Expo’s leftovers.

There’s more. This is not “just” about feeding the poor, but about changing everyone’s food culture, about providing for the existing disparities – using chefs as a good example – surely so as to eliminate the bad diet due to hunger, but also the one caused by too much low quality food. This is the further challenge for the future.

A thought comes to my mind. Had I closed my eyes, when at the FAO, it would have been hard to know where I was. If time travel was possible, I would have liked to have colleagues, culinary critics from the past, from the past century, with me. For sure they would have thought they were in a hospital where diseases linked to malnutrition and obesity and to the very bad distribution of food across the planet, were being prevented.

Not too long ago, up until some ten years ago, those who wanted a cure would go to a doctor, a hospital. They would never handle their health to cooks and chefs. Today this is the case. And it’s a beautiful revolution. Listening to the general director at the FAO Da Silva, putting food and sport together because of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro coming up is striking. It’s striking to hear him say: «We need chefs against hunger».

The FAO summons cooks to carry out a cultural revolution so that we can look at food with different eyes and mind. Good food that is both tasty and ethical and healthy. Behind the dish you are given, there’s a before and after you cannot ignore. On top of the good for the palate, there’s the goodness that your soul dictates.

The Brazilian director explained: «It’s not that there’s not enough food in the world. It is terribly distributed. Some eat too much, some eat too little. This doesn’t only happen when we compare developed countries with the others, it also happens within the same country. And in rich countries many people not only eat a lot, but they eat bad food too».

Hence the social role of chefs: indicating a correct way for nutrition, fighting culinary ignorance, keeping two excellences as point of reference, on the one hand Japan – the state with the best quality of food in the world – and on the other the Mediterranean diet. So just to be clear: more fruit, more vegetables, more fresh and local produce. Choices that would also help the network of small local producers. A new way of looking at food.

The FAO has given itself a deadline for this battle that needs to be won: 2030, a year that seems distant yet it is marked yearly by the World Hunger Day, on 16th October (the FAO itself was founded on 16th October 1945).

Bottura is already perfectly in line. He’s taken on this commitment that involves the world, as «Refettorio is a cultural, not charity project. And chefs today are more than just recipes, they offer an ethical vision of food».