Let the Expo begin

I can’t wait to enter Expo and for everything to begin. I can’t wait since March, 7 years ago, in Paris, when Milan won over the Turkish town of Smyrna, which presented the theme of safety. Seven years and one month later we’re ready. We’re ready among thousands of polemics and as many problems, many of which were good problems. Except if you only look at, or mostly look at, what is negative, you end up ignoring the exceptional work done at Rho so that tomorrow it can all start well and proceed even better.

I only visited the site once, a couple of weeks ago when it was still a large building site and much was still left to the imagination and needed to be finished. I was impressed. Italy is the country of Tafazzi and Brancaleone, of melodrama and jinxes, it is so true. We can be ashamed of many things, corruption and bureaucracy, for sure, and even craftiness, all those things that make many Italians feel as though the World Fair was something distant, an alien ship. Those who are working at full speed so that tomorrow almost everything can be ready, starting from the sole commissioner, Giuseppe Sala, would have needed enough time to explain Expo.

Yet this is how things are and I now prefer to remind that Italians are capable of unique accomplishments, those masterpieces that everyone envies when you go around the world and that you mention to balance off what doesn’t work and foreigners know very well and accuse you of as if all other countries and people were free of sins except us. Taking all this weight away, the Expo to be opened tomorrow is the result of a gigantic organisational effort, of which everyone should be proud. I hope it will represent a turning point, leaving the economic crisis behind.

We at Identità will open our space. It’s in the C1 area, between the pavilions of Malaysia and Thailand and in front of the cocoa, rice and coffee cluster; behind us, the children’s playground. Two floors and a programme as rich as ever. For once, Identità Golose will last 6 months instead of 3 days and will be both a restaurant (four courses for 75 euros, including wines) and a classroom in which many cooks, experts and chefs will present themselves. There will be cuisines from around the world and pizza, the formats of Identità connected with Milan, there will be pasta from around Italy, books, and the people who will in turn pass by the Decumanus, those little under 2 km between one and the other end where we will walk until October 31st.

Walk, nothing else, as push scooters and bicycles are forbidden. Luckily, the large main road is covered and the vaults will shade everyone from the sun, making it all even more spectacular and enjoyable. I still remember clearly the sun-drenched clearing in Shanghai, Expo 2010, in the middle of the summer, when we were in charge of the culinary event connected with the week dedicated to Milan, inside Padiglione Italia. The long connection with the current fair started then, from a double vision we had, having at heart both cooking in all its facets, from Massimo Bottura with whom we will open this event to all the chefs who will get on the stage, and the one hundred businesses in Milan that go beyond the very well known starred restaurants.

For every detail on the programme, please click here.