Since February, we’re experiencing a completely new story. A sneaky and creeping pandemic has spread. Hard to notice and immediate, it has forced us to be very patient, very intelligent and remarkably optimistic so that discomfort won’t win over us and make us slip from everyday life until there’s no more sun to be seen at the end of this long night.
Opening the hub of Identità Golose Milano in Via Romagnosi all through June was of great psychological help for us at Identità. We’ve been supported by clients, chefs, restaurateurs, pastry-chefs, pizzaioli, journalists and bloggers and also got lots of inputs and advice for the reopening after the summer. Romagnosi, the guide and the website, and the 16th edition of the congress in Milan, set from Saturday 24th October to Monday 26th.
And, contrary to what you may think, every speaker replied positively, so much so that the programme which we will upload at the end of the month will almost be a photocopy of the initial one. Almost because we have no certainties as for long journeys from North and Latin America and from Asia. But the world will, in any case, be in Milan thanks to the online events, an original format, which we will promote season after season.
Calling, speaking and listening to Alajmo and Pepe, Assenza and Bottura, Cracco and Klugmann, Romito and Bartolini, Bosco and Padoan, Cuttaia and Cedroni, Brunelli and Camanini, Diego Rossi and … showed us unprecedented feelings, an extraordinary desire to participate in October at the Congress Centre in Via Gattamelata. There’s energy in everyone, not just in us. There’s an incredible attention to every detail, a strength that is born from knowing that this further postponement, from the summer to the autumn, is not like the previous one.
Over two months of confinement, all stuck at home, have left a deep mark in every aspect of society. Never as when the corona virus started to spread we’ve been talking ceaselessly of the Sense of responsibility, so much so that for us, having chosen it as the theme for Identità Golose 2020, it was as if we were experiencing it personally, a mantra for every action aimed at the rebirth of Italy in every aspect, including restaurants.
Our most sincere thanks go to Corrado Assenza for having interpreted, with his famous Cassata alla siciliana, the previous theme of Identità Golose 2020, The Sense of Responsibility, a trait d’union for an event scheduled early in March 2020 that didn’t take place because of the pandemic
When everyone was getting ready to reopen and start again, we were not sure it was only a matter of getting back to work as if after a long holiday. The very way in which we conceive the restaurant industry, in its different formats, wherever in the world, was upturned. Not only in Italy. So we were forced to think of a rebirth, of new formats, new policies, new ways of approaching clients and the staff too, to consider tradition and innovation as closely connected as ever. In times of crisis it’s almost automatic to seek comfort in what we know best and food gives endless comfort.
It is for these reasons that we changed the theme of October, keeping the explicit hint at the Sense of Responsibility. Which is by itself no longer enough. Hence what may sound as an invitation: Build a new future. New plans and projects, not just a good enough reinterpretation of the past. Of course everyone knows us for what we’ve done in the past, but it’s not enough to retouch here and there so that in a few months’ time everything will be back to normal. The lack of foreign tourists, whether coming for pleasure or on business, has already undermined the foundations of some of the top establishments, everywhere in the Western world.
Riccardo Camanini, chef and patron at Lido 84 in Gardone Riviera (Brescia)
Identità Golose 2020 intends to give a significant contribution to tracing the future guidelines that will address the crisis, and this has led us to choose a new dish as the emblem of the congress, a recipe strongly founded in tradition but also new, projected in the future to give it shape. So here is the Chargrilled rib steak in broth from Riccardo Camanini owner, with his brother Giancarlo, of Lido 84 in Gardone Riviera on the Brescian banks of Lake Garda.
Grilled steaks are almost as old as men. Meat requires, loves fire since it was invented. We can elevate the cooking, but that’s what it is. Camanini confirms to be capable of seeing incredibly original balances, the pairing of ingredients, cooking techniques and textures that without an explanation and the following tasting nobody would ever think of.
I was lucky enough to find a table at Lido 84 on the first day after it reopened in June and not only did the Camanini brothers invest in the building, but Riccardo has also included some new recipes and the Chargrilled rib steak in broth struck me. It is commonly said that broth kills the grill. It’s very true. But then an UFO arrives, with ideas and stoves, and that tasting of a solid part like the meat, and of a liquid part like the broth sounds to your palate, your memory and your brain like the most normal, obvious and logic thing.
With this masterpiece from Camanini it’s clear that we have experienced a passage from caves to contemporary life at the same time. It reminds me of the initial scene from 2001 Spacey Odyssey when director Stanley Kubrick had to move his monkey, which had just turned into a Sapiens, from prehistory to intergalactic travelling without wasting time. Hardly easy. He solved the problem by launching a femur in the air, a large bone which, spinning in the air, blurred into a spaceship. Camanini has brought us into the future.
See you in Milan, from the 24th to the 26th of October.
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso