the ten combinations of food and culture

Massimo Bottura, one of the most influential chefs in the world, is the new ambassador of Enit and Italian tourism worldwide.

Enit places great emphasis on food and wine tourism, with dedicated digital and print campaigns both on the italia.it portal and with mega billboards in strategic locations around the world, such as airports and international plazas. It is Massimo Bottura’s turn to succeed Roberto Bolle in America and in the agora par excellence, Times Square, but also in Belgium, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Austria.

Massimo Bottura: ten food and culture pairings

The current food and wine advertising campaigns focus on two themes: Italian lunch breaks and Italian shopping. Those of branded content, on the other hand, are much broader with food and wine themes also indirectly addressed in articles and campaigns published in Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Japan, Canada, Austria, Switzerland and Spain. To relaunch Italy in the world, Massimo Bottura also provides valuable advice on exclusive destinations on the official Italian website, highlighting the assets of the Bel Paese at the crossroads where gastronomy meets art and culture.

“In almost every town and village in Italy there are magnificent monuments and sites – says the famous chef – In every museum you will find a masterpiece that excites you and from which you learn something”. Thus he recommends combinations like the one that associates the Osteria Gucci with the Uffizi Gallery in Florence to sublimate the unusual and discover the beauty of the unexpected, seen as a futuristic appearance that reveals itself “unexpectedly “, to quote a small and prodigious embroidery of Alighiero Boetti, we come across the Italian marvel”.

Chef’s recommendations

“The day after the opening of Gucci Osteria in Florence – he says – I found myself walking alone in the city, there was no one at the entrance to the Uffizi. I asked if it was closed , “no, it’s just early”, was the answer. After the staircase, I found myself in a corridor with large windows, flooded with a magical light. I passed in front of the Sala del Duecento, suddenly I am retraced my steps and I saw her: before me was the Madonna di Ognissanti, shining in pure gold and orange moldings. I was breathless, unlike Kubrick in 2001: The Odyssey space, that Madonna is a fragment of the future, a spaceship (also in form), which comes from the past to transport us to the future, to reclaim new infinite cultural galaxies”.

The regenerating discoveries of Italy then lead to Piscinas, and to Monte Catria. This is where the chef takes his breath away. “Places to discover that I know nothing about yet, those that have to be conquered in one way or another: like the beach of Piscinas, in Sardinia, where to get there you have to cross a dirt road and a small river between the sand dunes; or the hermitage of Monte Catria, in the upper Marches, a true spiritual destination, also mentioned by Dante in the Divine Comedy”.

Massimo Bottura and his travels

Memories of his most memorable trips to Italy are tied to the route that brings him home between Modena and Manhattan. A return to “tasting” with a tortellini à la Tortellante di Modena, but also with the emotion of an “aperitif on Etna, suspended between hell and paradise”, he declares. The flavors of childhood also invest other destinations, bringing it to Samboseto, Parma. It was on September 30, 1970, the day of his eighth birthday, that his parents took him on a gastronomic pilgrimage to a restaurant that was already legendary at the time: the trattoria of Peppino and Mirella Cantarelli. “I can still taste the savarin, a timbale of rice with a tongue crust and clay guinea fowl”.

At the Casa Maria Luigia in Modena, hidden in the fog, is its plain “which guards and protects a treasure: when you observe it, without seeing anything, you can dream of everything. At the end of this journey of the imagination, you will be able to explore the calm and silent corners of the centuries-old park of Casa Maria Luigia, the guest house I opened in the countryside of Modena. And there you can stop and sleep, enveloped in calm. Because it is Italy after all, it is already a dream within us that moves and invades everywhere. “Inspiration always begins in our head. We can also find the sea or the mountains in the asphalt of an autogrill, because we are the ones who imagine them. The pleasure of a trip is to wait to arrive at their destination”.