A way of cooking, a way of life

Promoting our food products in a unique way. This is Carlo Cracco’s strategy for Italy. The famous Michelin-starred chef has even turned to agriculture, buying a farm with his wife: “It is our reservoir of raw materials. It is long and tiring work, but fundamental because I cannot depend on the market. We produce 70-80 varieties of vegetables, fruit, oil and wine. Having our own vegetables is a huge satisfaction and a treasure in terms of flavor, because our production is unique.”

According to Carlo Cracco, the key to 100% Italian production lies in the ability to transform and add value: "In food and wine, the products that are most representative of Italy,” he explains, are “those we don’t know, that we often take for granted and perhaps forget, but in reality, make the real difference. Tomatoes are not even Italian but we have valued them in a unique way. Our value is enhancing the products, our ingenuity, our vision, our experience. Therefore, the more unknown it is, the more value it has". It is our reservoir of raw materials. It is long and tiring work, but fundamental because I cannot depend on the market. We produce 70-80 varieties of vegetables, fruit, oil and wine

Are we doing enough compared to other countries? “You can never do enough,” he says, noting that in a country like Italy, very rich in biodiversity, it is not an easy task. “We are not a country with 5-10 products, we have a few hundred or perhaps even more; it is more complicated, but we have a whole culture to nurture.”

For Cracco, two years of COVID have created “the opportunity to consolidate and strengthen what has been done before.” However, he warns, we are all required to “join forces more, value the team because you can't just forge ahead randomly and expect to succeed every now and then. We need to create a strong team that succeeds more in the long run. This is what I believe the pandemic has left us as a legacy. And we also rediscovered restaurants because being without is a problem: sociability, conviviality are a necessity; seeing the city full of life is something else. I think COVID has made us understand how essential it is to be together.” Foreign tourists who have returned to Italy are well aware of this, increasingly attracted to good living and Italian cuisine. Food and wine and tourism go hand-in-hand and always open up new perspectives. At this point, concludes Cracco, the operators must “simply do their job well, as they have always done and are capable of doing. At the moment, everything is going very well and we must seek to take advantage of this positive moment to strengthen our offering.”