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Expo Milano 2015 opens its doors on May 1st for a unique six month event in Milan, Italy. Countries taking part in the Expo from all over the world will build temporary pavilions inside a newly designed ‘sustainable smart city’ in the city’s Northern countryside. Each country will use their pavilion design as a stage to showcase research, ideas and technologies, each displaying their own interpretation of the theme: Feeding the Planet - Energy for Life.
The first of these stages in the FDL spotlight - and the first article in a series examining the Expo - is the USA pavilion - a space that promises to wow visitors with ‘provocative and interactive exhibits’.
The USA Expo Milan 2015 team is headed up by some pretty big ambassadors from the food world. The president of the USA pavilion is Dorothy Cann Hamilton who founded The French Culinary Institute. Chief creative office is Mitchell Davis, vice president of The James Beard Foundation, who told The World’s 50 Best Restaurants organisation in a recent interview that the USA team “want to surprise people with the breadth and diversity of American cuisine. From food trucks to fine dining restaurants”, adding, “people will be surprised at the growing trend of sustainable sourcing and other practices that are sweeping across the nation. The pavilion’s culinary direct will be chef Grant MacPherson, Secretary of State John Kerry has even got involved alongside President Obama who said he's proud to see America taking part in the Expo.
The USA Pavilion houses an interactive exhibition that covers a 26,000-square-foot area with topics focusing on everything from food security to nutrition and health, culinary culture to science and technology. The space will also contain a huge vertical farm the size of a football pitch that will be harvested daily. The space will also feature a boardwalk made from repurposed wood tarn from the Coney Island boardwalk.
The Associated Press reported this week that the team will bring six authentic food trucks from America to celebrate regional food and ethnic food trends, and one of the most exciting offerings has to the James Beard American Restaurant that will operate from the centre of Milan, serving classic American dishes so guests can sample things like Gospel Lunch and Thanksgiving dinner.
It was the French pavilion that wowed American’s during the 1939 World’s Fair in New York with Le Restaurant - a place that served some of the best dishes France had to offer. It was this popular restaurant on American soil during the fair that helped to establish French fine dining in New York with many French chefs visiting the Fair staying to open their own places across the U.S.
It will be the Americans who come to Milan on May 1st hoping to reverse this role and wow the world with their own unique blend of food culture. We wait to see if their presence in Italy will help spawn a network of American inspired restaurants across the country.
S.Pellegrino will be Official Water partner of the Italy's Expo Milano 2015 and Padiglione Italia.
