Restaurant Australia’s challenge

Two years ago, the government of a country in the so-called West was eager to understand how foreigners perceived its food. The answer was alarming since it is a great food producer. Those who had never set foot there, ignored it and thus could not judge it. On the contrary, those who had arrived there, and therefore had to discover it because we all need to put something in our engines, did like it a lot.

This story, therefore, had a happy ending, or actually it didn’t, because this country has only seas and oceans surrounding it in the middle of the south hemisphere. You really must want to go to Australia, to get there. It’s not like you wake up on a Saturday morning in Milan and decide to take the car or a train to spend a weekend on the French Riviera or in the Grisons. This endless sweep of red earth, 25 times as big as Italy and twice as big as the European Union is (un)inhabited by only 21 millions and a half people who through their representatives questioned how to be known for their food excellence too.

One may believe this is something banal, but I cannot imagine any of our governments taking such a straightforward decision at least on a subject that does not impact religion or sex. I do count on the current wave, for instance with the Expo, but in the past we would have certainly have given funds randomly (remember Italia.it?) and someone would have taken advantage of it. After all, have not the council members of Regione Emilia or the Provincia di Bolzano, asked to be refunded for sex toys? In Canberra, instead, one and a half year ago they decided that they would set a table for 80 people from 16 countries from all around the world, the so called influencers. Among them, the author of this article together with four more Italians: Davide Scabin, Lorenzo Cogo, Gabriele Rubini, better known as Chef Rubio, and Bruno Gambacorta. That is to say a star-chef, a baby-star, a TV-chef and a journalist, also from television. Andrea Petrini is also Italian, though he’s representing France.

The motto of the organisers of Tourism Australia: tweet as much as possible, and then write, write non-stop. So that people far away from Sydney and Melbourne, from Uluru and Perth can know that Australian food is good, just like this country-continent is spectacular thanks to its beauty and its charming vastness. The goal? Giving an extra reason to increase arrivals thanks to Restaurant Australia, starting from the show night on Friday November 14th, 48 hours ago, with its christening by the table.

Invite the World to dinner took place in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, an island south of the motherland, a spot that looks small on maps but it is nonetheless as big as Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto put together, 68 thousand square km full of nature over which its 500 thousand inhabitants watch.

Media-wise, the choice of Tasmania was perfect and also a little of a paradox because even Aussies themselves have always defined it as Australia’s best kept secret, and for this very reason something that needs to be unveiled with care. Not only that: by choosing Hobart, they avoided the eternal contest between Melbourne and Sydney, with the inhabitants of the first suffering the marvel of the second. Feeling envy is the destiny of every second city. It would be best to dedicate those energies to do even better than what is already doing, but we’re not in the field of logic. If one were always lucid, he wouldn’t say as that colleague who rhetorically asked: “what can Sydney have more, a part from the bay and the Opera House?”. Hardly peanuts.

1. To be continued