Best wishes Identità Golose Milano

Five years!

On the 18th of September 2018, a Tuesday five years ago, Claudio Ceroni and I opened Identità Golose Milano in Via Romagnosi 3, between the Mandarin Oriental and the Teatro alla Scala, the first international gastronomy hub. It was, and still is, the daily showcase, in absolute contemporaneity, in which to expose every idea, every reality born in the wake of the Identità Golose congress, first born February 2004 with a first edition January 2005, and the six months of Identità Expo, from May to October 2015.

That vision almost at the turn of the century was formidable. The 184 days spent at Milan Expo when the thousand cuisines of the world met at the Rho Fairgrounds were incredibly intoxicating. When the curtain fell, we were immediately seized with nostalgia for an event that, in our interpretation, proposed different protagonists day after day, chefs from Italy, Europe and the World, three geographical realities that are very dear to us because we are there to know and unite peoples and countries from every corner of the globe.

To recreate the magic associated with the World Fair, and return to a reality marked by lunches and dinners, tastings, conventions and conferences, it was decisive to find a space that was central in the city, but not brazenly in the public eye. Identità Golose Milano had to overlook a street close to the busiest thoroughfares, that was elegant but of an understated elegance, where discretion appeared as a virtue.

And the choice eventually fell on the space that long after the war housed the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation, which had moved in the meantime. The reading room would become the Oval Room for conferences, discussions and conventions, and for private lunches or dinners too. The various spaces occupied by the mighty archive would instead house both the kitchen and the restaurant, while the courtyard, dominated by a superb century-old wisteria, would welcome a bioclimatic greenhouse that we called Glicine for this very reason.

The curtain went up on the evening of Tuesday 18th of September, dedicated to Milan. Coordinated by Andrea Ribaldone, already a protagonist during Identità Expo, a master at cooking but also at calculating food costs, in some ways an even more important aspect, Andrea Aprea, Antonio Guida, Alessandro Negrini, Davide Oldani, Fabio Pisani, Andrea Ribaldone and Claudio Sadler took turns. The following evening we celebrated Italy thanks to Annie Feolde, Cristina Bowerman, Enrico Cerea and Alessandro Della Tommasina, Gennaro Esposito, Niko Romito and Mauro Uliassi. Finally, the world the night after that. We all remember Christoph Bob, Rafael Charquero, Philip Léveillé, Matias Perdomo and Paco Roncero.

So this was the first week, and then week after week, month after month, overcoming the terrible months of the pandemic, taking advantage of every useful moment to strongly reiterate the points we hold most dear. One is an imperative: to value young people, our future in the dining room and the kitchen.

With Ribaldone as a lifelong point of reference in the kitchen, here is Andrea Polini his alter ego in the dining room where Simone Sacchetti is the sommelier. Between ovens and induction stoves, over time Edoardo Traverso, in the hub from early morning, has climbed every rang until he became the executive chef, Alessio Magistro his deputy.

On the 4th of October, we will applaud all those who contribute daily to Romagnosi and beyond. We will do so with a dinner, with guest of honour Massimo Bottura, which will be curated, in order of course, by Alessandro Lucassino, Franco Pepe, Antonia Klugmann, Edoardo Traverso and Simone Finazzi. The former is the head of Cucina Mutualité in Paris, of the Alain Ducasse group; Pepe is the world's most famous pizza maker, Pepe in Grani his headquarters in Caiazzo (Caserta); Antonia Klugmann, the muse of the green and natural world with L'Argine di Vencò in Dolegna del Collio (Gorizia); Edoardo Traverso will play at home; finally pastry chef Simone Finazzi, will delight us with the sweet notes that have always tied me and us to the Cerea family of Brusaporto (Bergamo).

To each his own identity, in Milan as everywhere.

 

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso