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In Milan this week, with different and seemingly distant experiences, people came together around a table with the same objective: to raise awareness of food waste and to share concrete actions to combat it.
The event was Why Waste? The Social Dinner, a new format created by S.Pellegrino in collaboration with Food for Soul, the international organisation founded by Lara Gilmore and Massimo Bottura to promote the fight against food waste.
At the Identità Golose restaurant, guests experienced first-hand the concept of zero-waste coming to life on the plate over a menu conceived from ingredients and products that are usually discarded.
Special guest Gilmore, president of Food for Soul, explained the mission of the organisation: that of transformation. Not just the transformation of food waste into delicious food thanks to the creativity of Food for Soul refettorios (refectories) all over the world but broadening the meaning of transformation to include the places redeveloped and given back to cities, as well as the communities that experience real change from within through the work of the refettorios.
The six dishes served during the evening were created by Karime López (left), chef at Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura in Florence, and Sabrina Russo (right), chef at the Refettorio Made in Cloister, Naples. The first is a Michelin-starred restaurant, the second is a project that every day uses surplus food to prepare healthy and delicious meals for people in need.
The appetisers, both prepared by López, brought the chef's Mexican roots to the plate thanks to the use of cod and in particular kokotcha (or cheeks), a very fine and tender cut that – at least in Italy – is little known and often discarded. The flavours and energy of Naples were the heart of Russo's creation with a gourmet version of pasta and potatoes, as well as meatballs. This was because, as the chef explained, Neapolitan cuisine itself has an origin in peasant food and is an excellent example for understanding how to enhance recycled ingredients by trying to replicate the recipes at home too.
The spirit of collaboration between the two chefs did not stop at the preparation of dishes: at the end of the evening López enthusiastically accepted Russo's invitation to join her at Refettorio Made in Cloister to share an experience in the kitchens there. Because, after all, there is nothing like the exchange and sharing of ideas to instigate change.
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