The protagonists at Identità Milano 2024: make way for Bruno Verjus, conqueror of two worlds

‘What interests me most about cooking are the people who cook and those who help them, the artisans. I am fascinated by those who can devote their lives to making carrots or who go out of their way to find mushrooms when in season. There is something really touching about this, a concentration of determination, culture - there is a lot of culture in the ability to do well, otherwise it doesn't work - and great courage. These people ultimately produce sensibly, in a world in which you want to get involved because it is full of poetry.’

These are the beautiful and eloquent words of Bruno Verjus, collected in June 2015 by our contributor Angela Barusi (the full article can be found here), two years after opening Table, the Parisian restaurant with which the Frenchman went from pen to frying pan, from being a gastronomic journalist of the highest level, to an equally successful chef: eleven years after the ribbon-cutting ceremony, two Michelin stars are sewn onto his jacket, while the World's 50Best sees Table as the tenth best restaurant in the world, the highest ranking for a French establishment.

As we were saying, this cultured and energetic gentleman, born in Roanne in 1959, has dedicated many years of his life to the profession of food critic, working for various French publications and for the prestigious Parisian festival Omnivore, as well as for his beautiful blog Food Intelligence (stopped since 2017, but still very entertaining to browse through). For five years, he was also an assiduous contributor to the Identità Golose Guide, giving us valuable analyses and incisive accounts of his country's culinary trends.

In 2013, at 54, he announced the completely surprising choice to leave journalism to open his own restaurant in Paris, on Rue de Prague, near the Gare de Lyon. He earned his first Michelin star in February 2018 and his second four years later.

Bruno Verjus perfectly embodies the saying 'Food is culture'. Before opening Table, he explored France for years, not just in restaurants, but meeting producers and discovering quality products. These experiences turned him into an excellent self-taught cook, with the help of his mentor Alain Passard. In his restaurant, he celebrates France through its local products, but not only: ‘My mind is set on the future with obsessive attention to ingredients, so much so that the firstlings come to me from a nursery in Udine called Orto felice. It's not a question of tradition or innovation, two concepts that should be discarded. I would like to know what one uses. Take La Tour d'Argent: established in 1582 it offers classic cuisine but with authentic, fresh ingredients. That's what I desire, the actuality of shopping. I shy away from codifications and proudly remember that I can count on 140 different suppliers', he told Paolo Marchi, who interviewed him a few weeks ago (you can read the fruit of that conversation here).

And again, to quote another interview we did with Verjus when he came to cook at Identità Golose Milano in 2019: 'We are the ones who decide what kind of world we want to live in based on what we eat. We decide if we want to eat industrial food, large-scale distribution, if we want to give money to these organisations, even when we are aware that this choice is not the best either for our health, or for our planet, or for the people who work for those realities. Or if instead we want to support with our food choices those producers who are truly passionate about their work, who do everything to cultivate in a healthy and sustainable way, defending seasonality and varieties that are in danger of disappearing, who breed animals always thinking about their well-being, who fish ethically and consciously. When you make the right choice, you become a kind of bank that invests in a better world' (here is the piece on the dinners at  our Hub).

Who better than Bruno Verjus to bring to the stage of the 19th edition of Identità Milano the theme No innovation without disobedience - revolution today? The appointment with the French chef is at 11.20 a.m. on Sunday 10th March, in the MiCo Auditorium.
 

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Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso