Tag Archives: salone del gusto

Inside Salone del Gusto, Italy’s Artisanal Foodie Mecca

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Clockwise: whole prosciutto from San Daniele on display; a band of two accordions, a guitar and a hurdy-gurdy (the bearded man on the right was making animal puppets out of a hankerchief to entertain the kids); a self-service milk truck parked outside Salone del Gusto; Puglian women stringing cherry tomatoes by hand

After a long morning of seminars, I was sipping a glass of Left Hand beer, when the sound of drums and horn began thundering down the hall. It was Macedonian folk ensemble Akud Mirce Acev, beating a lively rhythm and whipping a crowd of Asians into a frenzied dance. Heads bobbed, cameras flashed, women in hanbok dresses waved their arms in the air. Just another day at Salone del Gusto.

Salone del Gusto is an international food fair and celebration of the artisanal producer, on a decidedly not small scale. In the exhibition rooms of Torino’s Lingotto Fiere, 65.000 m² of space will encompass 910 exhibitors from 17 Italian regions and 46 countries. In 2008, the fair attracted 180.000 visitors and I would guess that this year’s show attracted just as many, if not more attendees. The event is a combined effort of Slow Food and the city of Torino, and as you might expect, the environmental impact is minimized through the use of ecofriendly materials. For instance, the flooring for the stalls is made from Ecomat material, made from the residual pulp left from olive oil pressing mixed with new and recycled polypropylene.

In these grand halls, traditional food products and wines are showcased from all over the world. Grass-green newly-pressed olive oil from Umbria. Perfumed Madagascar vanilla beans. Hot, crackling Tuscan porchetta. Cold glasses of Dogfish Head beer. Wait a minute, that’s not international, it’s American! As it turns out, the only American products at Salone del Gusto were beers at the American Craft Brewers Association stand. I spent some time chatting with “beer wench” Ron from Lagunitas Brewery, and it was nice to see familiar names and bottles for a change.

Of course, the bulk of the fair featured Italian products, some of which are highlighted below:
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Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto

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Tomorrow marks the opening of one of the sustainable food world’s most prestigious events, Terra Madre (or “mother earth”). This is a biennial conference sponsored by Slow Food since 2004, a meeting of farmers, chefs, producers, researchers, students, and other people who want to revolutionize the way we feed ourselves. Over the next five days, 8.000 people from 150 nations will gather in my backyard (Turin) to share ideas, make new friends and revel in the solidarity that we may be few but strong.

Simultaneously, Salone del Gusto will be happening next door to Terra Madre. This is a food fair for artisanal producers to demonstrate and market their wares. About two-thirds of exhibitors hail from Italy, and the remainder will be coming from all over the rest of the world. There are also chef demonstrations, lectures and tasting workshops on everything from Sámi cuisine (think Nordic wild berries, reindeer and elk), to the Vermouths of Catalonia.

For my part, I have volunteered as part of the University of Gastronomic Sciences audio/visual troupe. Our scrappy crew of nine students will divide into teams of three, and float between the buildings to document university-run and youth movement events, interview students and capture the zeitgeist of the conference. The hours will be long (on Saturday, it looks like I’ll be on the job from 9 am to 9 pm), but the rewards will be substantial. Besides, I have always wanted to learn about filmmaking, so here is my relatively low-stress chance to get acquainted with neutral density filters and techniques of cinematography. Did I mention that the a/v troupe meetings have been almost entirely in Italian? Vocabulary that I never thought I would need to know in Italian: frames per second, diaphragm aperture. Did you know that in the US video is generally recorded at 30 fps, while in Europe video is captured at 25 fps? Me neither. We plan to cut, edit and post clips at the end of each day, so maybe some of my footage will make it online in the next few days.

I am also co-hosting a tasting workshop at Salone del Gusto with UNISG President Carlo Catani. The workshop is titled “New Orleans in a Cocktail,” and our guest will be Chris McMillan, one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail, and bartender at Uncommon Bar in the Renaissance Père Marquette hotel in New Orleans.

Anyway, the following is a video from the 2008 conference (not created by UNISG students) that gives you a taste of the global circus that is about to descend upon Torino:

[vimeo vimeo.com/4417753]