Here’s how Bottura’s party went

«You must have known it, Paolo», said Lara Gilmore,MrsBottura that is, on Tuesday afternoon. She was referring to the fact Massimo was to win the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Of course I didn’t know, but I did try to think about it, knowing very well that those who are considered most likely to win end up being disappointed. The most disappointed of all was Brazilian Alex Atala four years ago, but so did Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park last year.

Putting those who know little but speak a lot aside, given 2015 was dominated in Italy by Expo in Milan it was easy to think that never as this year we would have so many critics and food writers linked to the Fifty Best in Italy. Not only that: the chef from Modena launched his extraordinary Refettorio project right in Milan – the next phase of which will be in August, in Rio de Janeiro during the Olympic Games. If not now, it was never going to happen. The world is a big place and in many, chefs, firms and institutions, play Risk with restaurants. There are plenty of people taking part in this competition.

Lara’s sentence was due to my choice of presenting the new Identità right on the day after the award giving ceremony. The events will take place in Chicago, on 1^st-2^nd October, and New York, on 4-6^th October, inside the school of Eataly Flatiron. We took a dare and were lucky. The rest was thanks to the skill of the four Italians participating: Massimo Bottura, Enrico Crippa, Raffaele Alajmo and Davide Scabin.

The invitation said presentation and celebration with an announcement: at the end of July, the second Eataly store will open in Manhattan, Downtown. The restaurant inside, to be called Osteria della Pace, will have Riccardo Orfino as its chef. The name of the restaurant was not given by chance as it will be located where the Twin Towers used to be before the 9/11 attacks in 2001. On this occasion, on Tuesday, Orfino served a Spaghetti frittata. It’s a poor dish, made with left-over ingredients, which Orfino created thinking about the theme of the October event: "Don’t waste the planet". An imperative that was stressed by Expo, and will be dominant for a long time.

Together with us, in Chicago and New York, there will also be Grana Padano, Lavazza, Acqua Panna S.Pellegrino, Birra Moretti, Mirafiore Fontanafredda and Monograno Felicetti, plus Berlucchi’s bubbles with which we’ll toast to an extraordinary Tuesday. Bottura was the star performer: «My father wanted me to become a lawyer, but I felt I wanted to be a cook and then a chef. As everyone in Italy I wanted to be acknowledged by the French, get the three Michelin stars. The man who was to become my father-in-law saw me champing at the bit, so he kept repeating that I had to be patient, grow slowly, follow the example of the most majestic trees. I first needed to develop deep roots that would hold during the tempest, then everything would follow. And that’s what happened».

Osteria Francescana is in Via Stella in Modena, that’s a sign: «When I received the first star, I had the jacket they make you wear at the presentation lying on my bedside table as I was sleeping, for a month. I would wakeup wondering if it had been a dream. I’d look next to the bed, find it and then the day could start. One day I told the mayor of Modena that he needed to change the name of the street: Via Tre Stelle. We laughed».

And we all did at Eataly. There was plenty of Italy’s beauty. And Massimo told the American audience how he met New Yorker Lara and she did the same. And then he dedicated her some beautiful romantic words: «Lara adds poetry to my life». A life that given the success in the 50 Best will be even more in the front line. In fact it already was on Tuesday. I’ve never seen so many French chefs smiling for an Italian success, starting from Alain Ducasse, Bottura’s first mentor.

Then from Manila came Margarita Forés, the best female chef according to the 50 Best Asia. Then volcanic Mario Batali. As soon as they were happily posing, came three more great chefs, Pierre Hermé, Yannick Alléno and Paul Pairet, we just wrote about him here. Ducasse said: «We all need to express our own culture. It’s not a question of Italy and France, of guides and awards. This is the response to globalisation: be yourself».