Mercatino del Gusto
posted by Geoff Andrews at Monday, August 20, 2012
The London Olympics has been very exciting. I was very proud, as an adopted Londoner, to see the Opening Ceremony last Friday night. This ceremony presented ‘Britain’s story’. It was a story told through our social history, popular culture, music and humour. A very British sense of humour, involving the Queen and James Bond. For me the real brilliance of Danny Boyle’s direction was that he wanted to tell the world the story of Britain through the people. These included some ‘forgotten’ stories. He wanted it to be a ‘history from below’, involving important traditions, and one which reflected the diversity of its people. This was a history which did not defer to corporate sponsorship and big business.
Slow Food shares many Olympian ideals. Instead of the ‘best, strongest and fastest’, it celebrates ’good, clean and fair’, but the principles are very similar. Above all they are defined by fairness and internationalism and a desire to bring together specialists and experts, from around the world, who provide us with pleasure and enjoyment.
Slow Food hosts its own ‘Olympic’ events, many of which I have been lucky to visit over the last few years. These include: Terra Madre, Salone del Gusto, Slow Fish, Cheese, Salina Isola Slow, (where I met Michele Bruno for the first time). Mercatino del Gusto, is obviously another ‘Olympic’ Slow Food event. I am very pleased to be here. These ‘Olympic Slow Food’ events are also built on the stories of ordinary people: the producers, farmers, chefs and those who work on the land. In these Slow Food stories, the farmers are the ‘rock stars’.
I wrote my book after visiting ten countries and hearing many different stories. Sometimes in very unlikely places. I remember the jam producers in a remote part of Transylvania (Romania), who were trying to recover their food traditions, in very difficult circumstances, after communism. In the home of fast food, the USA, I discovered many committed young activists determined to change their food culture. Meeting them and visiting small producers in remote parts of Wisconsin and Ohio changed my view of the USA. Slow Food Nation in San Francisco was the biggest Olympic Slow Food event outside Italy.
In Italy, of course, you have extraordinarily diverse food cultures. In Britain people talk about ‘Italian food’. But there is no such thing. The regional differences are profound. They tell many different stories. I have been to the Nebrodi mountains in Sicily to meet and taste the ‘suino nero’. I lived for a while in Bologna and was able to buy prosciutto and parmigiano from a different producer every day. I lived for a while in Bra, Piemonte, Slow Food’s ‘Olympic village’, where the 150 employees work in the offices. I particularly remember the long slow lunches with friends from Slow Food editore that lasted 3-4 hours. (In England people eat sandwiches next to the computer). I have been to the South, to Naples and to Bari and Matera. This is my first time in Salento. I know that the hospitality of the South is unique and I have enjoyed hearing about the food stories. Most British people go to Tuscany and Umbria. (They don’t know what they are missing!)
My book has the title ‘Slow Food: una storia tra politica e piacere’. I have described the pleasures, but we also need to understand the politics of food. In fact, Slow Food’s greatest argument is that we cannot separate politics and pleasure in the case of food. There are many dangers at the present time of austerity that the simple pleasures of food, namely the chance to taste local produce, and with respect to the environment, is under threat. The easy solution will be to increase cheap, unhealthy food. This is bad for the environment and bad for social justice. Fast Life has many contradictions. The Olympics after all is sponsored by McDonald’s and Coca Cola. We live at a time of growing hunger but also rising obesity.
Therefore I applaud Slow Food for defending the ‘right to pleasure’. Everybody should have the right to enjoy quality food, and farmers and local producers must have the right to earn a living. We need to see food as something which ‘unites’ rather than divides. Slow Food is a very necessary movement to bring about change, by bringing people together at events like this. I argue in my book that it is a political movement – with a difference. It is an unusual movement, which includes the gastronome as a political subject, and a lot of political debates at the dinner table. It has its own language – ‘co-producers’, ‘virtual globalisation’ and ‘convivia’ and ‘presidia’.
However, for me the most important dimension of Slow Food is the way it tells the story of food through the knowledge of ordinary people. It celebrates the producers and the grandmothers. There are so many more stories that need to be told. I have heard many new stories at Mercatino del Gusto; pane di Altamura, Caciocavallo, the olive oil, and almonds and wine. We have some interesting food stories from Britain to tell you about. (You may be surprised). I was very proud last Friday to hear some of the ‘forgotten’ British stories being told through culture and music. You should be very proud to tell visitors about your extraordinary food stories.