Food for change (Volume 9)

Massimo Bottura

• Publisher: European Investment Bank
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9789286142628
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Finance
• Index: Business

Massimo Bottura is more than a Michelin star-winning chef. Together with Lara Gilmore, he also founded Food for Soul, a non-profit organisation seeking to reduce food waste through social inclusion and mitigate the carbon impact on our planet. On the occasion of Expo 2015 in Milan and working in concert with Caritas Ambrosiana, Massimo Bottura opened Refettorio Ambrosiano, a new kind of community kitchen where chefs from around the world cooked nutritious meals for socially vulnerable guests using surplus ingredients recovered from the Expo's pavilions. The project's success led Bottura to found Food for Soul in 2016 aimed at replicating the model in other communities. Since then, Refettorio Gastromotiva in Rio de Janeiro, Refettorio Felix in London, Social Tables in Modena, Bologna and Naples, and Refettorio Paris in the French capital have all opened their doors. Further community kitchens are planned across the globe. This is the ninth essay in the Big Ideas series created by the European Investment Bank. The EIB has invited international thought leaders to write about the most important issues of the day. These essays are a reminder that we need new thinking to protect the environment, promote equality and improve people's lives around the globe.

REFETTORIO AMBROSIANO

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations shows us that almost one billion people are undernourished, while one third of the food we produce globally is wasted every year. Just think! Among all that wasted food there are nearly four trillion apples. How many apple tarts go to waste? The first time I came across those statistics was back in 2014 when Italy was getting ready to host the Expo 2015 world fair in Milan. The theme was “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”. Chefs like myself were being invited to cook, perform demonstrations, and create pop-up restaurants and gala events. I had a hard time getting my head around how all these events were addressing such a hefty and important theme; and those numbers kept whirling in my brain. If we did not do something about it now, the numbers would only get worse. I found the place where I could provide my response to the theme, my idea of an Expo pavilion in an abandoned theatre in the suburbs of Milan – among the crisscross of train tracks and urban expansion. What I had in mind was an Expo pavilion outside the trade fair district that could shed light on the invisible, on what was being overlooked and marginalised. Back then, I could never have imagined that this project would become a stage to launch a message of hope and action, nor could I have ever imagined that the project would grow into the movement it is today. Thanks to the help and involvement of many different people and organisations, we were able to restore the theatre and more importantly to transform it into a community kitchen full of art, light, beauty and life, which we called Refettorio Ambrosiano.

This is how some of the most influential and creative chefs from around the world found themselves in front of cheese rinds, wilted courgettes, bruised apples, browned bananas, and day-old bread. Before the construction began, I called on as many chefs, friends and colleagues as I could. One by one, I asked them if they could spare a few days from May to October to come to Milan to cook delicious and healthy meals for our guests each night. “But please,” I begged them, “don’t bring recipes with you because they’ll be useless. Your creativity, your techniques and, most importantly, an open mind will be enough.” They only understood why I had recommended this when the food truck arrived. What we did at Refettorio Ambrosiano, in fact, was collect surplus ingredients from the Expo pavilions and local supermarkets and transform them into delicious and healthy meals for our guests who were rough sleepers, immigrants, homeless men and women without regular access to food. Every morning boxes of surplus vegetables, fruit, mixed meats, dairy products and day-old bread would arrive. And every day a different chef had the job of creating a three-cou...

Table of contents

• BIG IDEAS
• FOOD FOR CHANGE
• CHILDHOOD FLAVOURS
• REFETTORIO AMBROSIANO
• FOOD FOR SOUL
• BIOGRAPHY