traditional hospitality requires that ‘visitors’ are offered an unconditional welcome. mediterranean cultures have always been highly appreciated for their ability to receive and make visitors feel at ease.

has over-tourism changed how visitors are welcomed and accommodated? is the offer to tourists still ‘authentic’? or with the introduction of ‘tourist menus’, for example, is the offer now simplified and qualitatively inferior?

The evolution of tourism has been tumultuous since the 1980s and ‘90s.

Let’s consider, for example, the millions of tourists literally ‘dumped’ by cruises into unprepared localities that, already overwhelmed by travelers, are stretched to their structural and operational limits.
Tourists, such as these, have been asking for entry-price products. Therefore, they have often been interpreted as people not interested in quality, as less knowledgeable patrons.

‘Tourist menus’ are the result of this assumption and are an answer to an assumed demand for cheap, straightforward, and easy-to-consume food. In this context, some operators have undoubtedly taken advantage of the situation. Others, however, are not necessarily malicious and have simply been adapting to a business environment characterized by high volume and low prices, feeling they do not have another choice.

Remember, the years of mass tourism have also been the years when the gastronomy production chain has entered a crisis that it is still experiencing. The traditional production chain, consisting of producer and grower on one side, and host and restaurateur on the other, has been broken.

Less experienced operators have entered the hospitality space serving pre-cooked meals at lower prices—think bars turned overnight into restaurants. This has been made possible by the emergence of new commercial models brokering different steps of the preparation process, who offer entrepreneurs products designed to decrease the working time and cost of cooking processes with the promise of higher margins. Think of food wholesale chains—i.e. Metro—where one can find ready-to-eat meals, ready-cut ingredients, frozen bases for pizzas, etc.

Many farmers have experienced serious challenges in a retail distribution that determines prices that often fail to cover their costs. Unable to sell directly to restaurants and consumers, many farmers have ceased their activities, leaving entire regions without independent farmers and growers.

In such a situation, doing things properly has become hard and costly for the people who are not trying to cut corners.

Thankfully, in the last decade, there has been a reckoning regarding the impact of ‘shortcuts’ on the production chain, and a new generation of professionals is trying to amend these tragic circumstances. Obviously, we need to be realistic—the damage is vast, contrasting stakeholders’ interests are still unresolved, and there is a lot to rectify.

Customers and providers need to be reminded of how things should be. I believe we need a drastic approach. We need to go back to teaching food education in elementary school, re-introduce school canteens instead of using catering services, empower workers’ unions—you can’t have quality without protecting your workers, and requalify the production chain.

It’s a long process that needs to be approached with care, but it is in our community and national interest to do so.

we are witnessing to two extremes: tourist menus on one side and haute cuisine on the other.
just as tourist menus presuppose that less wealthy tourists have limited knowledge of local cuisine, the market of ‘excellence’—top whiskeys, starred restaurants, etc.—has distanced patrons from the accessible nature of local culinary traditions. it has also led tourists and visitors to have a sometimes-inconsistent idea of the ‘terroirs’ they are visiting.

now, fine dining has begun to decline in some countries due to rising prices and the emergence of new behavioural models. what are people looking for?

Tourist menus and fine dining are the two sides of the same coin.

I do not have anything against haute cuisine. Fine dining is a form of artistic expression, a demonstration of a chef’s personal methodology, and the materialization of an idea. As an art performance, it is better when experienced infrequently; it should be an experience comparable to going to a museum, an activity reserved for special occasions. Fine dining food is exceptionally curated, less adapt to daily consumption.

The fine dining price proposition, moreover, appears to be imbalanced. The cost of the food that reaches patrons’ mouths represents a minimal percentage of the total price, which originates from the costs of the interior design, presentation, and the marketing of the food itself.

I am not surprised that, as result of these factors, there is a tangible performance-fatigue by patrons, a desire for more relaxed places, and easy foods. For those who regularly eat out, there is a need for an intermediate-level culinary offer, a more familiar type of professional cuisine for daily life.

We should translate our traditional knowledge into a new professional methodology that provides a less competitive and more serene environment for patrons. I hope this happens quickly, while mothers and grandmothers are still alive to pass on their knowledge.

people seem to be tired of excess. in china, new generations are embracing frugality, in contrast with the lifestyles of previous generations. Internationally, low salaries and rising costs are forcing people to pay greater attention to their discretionary expenses.

is the search of ‘simplicity’ an authentic or temporary feeling?

There is a sincere desire to return to simplicity. Because of this, I believe it is necessary to develop an intermediate culinary offer, before the—dare I say—speculative bubble deflates. We need to be able to pilot the deflation of the ‘haute cuisine’ phenomenon by steering it towards new models.

Young people must bring about change. They must redesign and establish the criteria of the new (Italian) popular cuisine, an Artusi-like movement that draws on our history and heritage to establish a new cuisine based on seasonality, freshness, healthy ingredients and, above all, a rediscovery of the concept of making things because they make sense—things done well for themselves, not to compete and to be better than others.

We need a new gastronomic culture in Italy for the people of the 21st century, documenting the way families cook at home, in all regions of the country, and re-interpreting it using modern and innovative models and methodologies. A real cuisine rooted at the center of a wider range of initiatives aimed to reverse the abandonment of small, independent, agricultural culture and terroirs.

We should wake up silenced consciences and use resources to recover and regenerate the land (rather than selling our land to finance solar energy cathedrals).

customers say they want to consume sustainable products. however, they don’t always buy them. companies talk about sustainability, but they are not often transparent about what this means.

based on your experience, do you think customers and partners are sincerely interested in adopting sustainable production and consumption?

We are far from a situation of widespread sustainability. The agricultural companies I partner with are only just starting to understand what sustainability is, what it actually implies.

In distribution, long supply chains make it very hard to monitor processes, and we lack precise regulations. I feel there are more people waving the ESG flag than there are people producing and distributing in a sustainable way.

Furthermore, final consumers, patrons, and buyers of food aspire to be sustainable but, in reality, are not. This is partly because of the price of ‘sustainable’ goods, but mostly because of a lack of sustainability knowledge and an awareness of the impact of their lifestyle choices.

They are happy to see their favorite restaurateur replace plastic dishes with, say, vegetable fiber ones. And yet, they do not enquire about the costs involved in the making of those fiber plates. How much energy is needed? Who made them? How much did they earn?

I feel the comprehension of the entire problem is quite superficial.

Finally, I feel customers don’t always understand the impact of their lifestyle choices. The reality is that we should, for example, completely stop using disposable cutlery—plates and everything else. We should go back to using proper plates. We should ask ourselves—why do we need to eat everywhere? Why do we need to have food delivered? Let’s focus on how unsustainable food takeaways and deliveries are.

Do you want to support the planet or eat wherever you want? Therein lies the contradiction.

we are going through a complex period in terms of environmental problems, lifestyle changes,
global conflicts, and consequent inflation.

what is the hospitality we need? do you think that the attempts to reformulate formats with a more anthropological value are understood by a wider public?

We need familiarity—hospitality as if you were hosting a friend at home. We need to be aware of all the choices and sacrifices that are necessary to be sustainable. Heavy sacrifices must be made to discard models and lifestyles that are not sustainable from an economic and social point of view.

We live in the era of communication but are we sure that we use communication for what really matters? If we are clear and transparent about the products and services we offer, I believe the clientele will understand.

you often talk about how the time has come for the food industry to take responsibility.

do you think both younger and older stakeholders feel this sense of calling?

I believe only a small percentage of companies and stakeholders are conscious about the situation.

Among my younger colleagues that percentage, however small, seems to be higher than it was at the beginning of the 2000s. Young people under thirty have a much higher sensitivity to topics than their peers ten years ago.

That gives me hope.