Ladies and Gentlemen, Italian cuisine

Ten years, 100 chefs. Yet the beautiful book published by Mondadori, to be presented tomorrow in Milan at 4 pm inside the Sala Reale at Stazione Centrale in Milan (entrance from Piazza Luigi di Savoia, close to the bus stop for Malpensa. Entrance is free, you’re all invited) is not self-celebratory. The ten years are those of Identità Golose: that is to say the decade between the first and eleventh edition of the congress in Milan, between January 2005 and February 2015. During this period, Paolo Marchi’s “baby” grew in parallel with Italy’s best cuisine and after all it is the chefs who are the protagonists of all this, that is to say of the book: “the 100 chefs who have changed Italian cuisine” – as in the subtitle.

"I believe that the culinary scene has never been so rich of interpreters of Italy and its bell towers. All these elements, these energies, can be noticed in the dishes that represent our evolution: each one of them is a brick with which to build a bridge that must take Italian cuisine into the future. Here you see the soundness of our tradition, the poetry of our soul and the irony of our mind. This book represents Italian contemporary cuisine", says Massimo Bottura in the preface to “100 chef x 10 anni”, which Mondadori publishes after a meticulous work to select the best in an evolution that is impossible to stop.

The result is a rich and – we hope – complete book, signed first of all by Paolo Marchi for the general editorial management; by the author of this piece – Carlo Passera – with regards to the chefs’ bios, and Annalisa Cavaleri for the interviews; finally by Giulia Corradetti for the editorial management, which was essential so that the 416 pages in the book would represent a sort of summa of many individual activities, those of the hundred chefs, which have gradually grown and grown in number, resulting in a huge collective work.

Each chef is presented in words and images: first a great photographic portrait, then a short yet we hope complete and bright bio, finally four questions, always the same (“When did you decide to become a chef?”; “What is the dish that best represents you and what is the ingredient you love the most?”; “What dish would you have liked to invent?”; “Your mother cuddled you with…”); finally a photo and recipe of their most significant dish.

Marchi says: “With Claudio Ceroni, the other half of Identità, my friend more than my partner, we started with an important consideration: today, in the Italian restaurant scene, there’s no longer a before and after Gualtiero Marchesi; in the first decade of the 21st century, thirty years after the master of all contemporary chefs – even those who don’t know it – the scene and its protagonists have changed”.

The volume tries to illustrate this in the best possible way, accepting the risk of generalisations and of excluding something or someone, but with four certainties, once again quoting Marchi. First: “Identità Golose has truly contributed to the emergence of new ideas in Milan”. Second: “This is not a history book. It is the first book to be dedicated to the great Italian cuisine of today and tomorrow. (…) There’s no past, no great masters from the past century, and even the present is celebrated as a projection of the future”. Third: chefs are in alphabetical order, and between “A” in Fabio Abbattista and “Z” in Pietro Zito “there’s the whole country with its ability of uniting tradition and innovation”. Fourth and last certainty: “The world adores us because there’s no other gastronomy that is the same for all and accepted by all”, the national choice is multifaceted and the book depicts it, from the super-star chefs to contemporary pizza chefs, from pastry chefs to the interpreters of natural cuisine, up to those who have found their way on the other side of the world. But always thinking of Italy.

In other words, lots of tiles creating a splendid mosaic. Bottura: “We have changed, and a lot too, in over a decade. The awareness acquired at the congress allowed us to understand, first of all, our common values, but also, and most of all, the differences that could become strong points on which to build our peculiar identities”.

Tomorrow, in Milan, there will also be the chef from Osteria Francescana. With him, Marchi, of course, and then the curators of the book as well as Claudio Ceroni of MAGENTAbureau and Stefano Peccatori of Mondadori, plus most of the chefs involved. There will be an initial debate moderated by Paolo Colombo of La7 and the presence of Chiara Lorenzutti of R101. Later, a little before 6 pm, everyone will be on the balcony for a photo. A photo of Italian cuisine.