Refectories for the poor designed by Chef Bottura

Not soup kitchens, nor dreary shelters where the homeless can find a hot meal, but actual refectories with the look of a Michelin-starred restaurant, complete with high-end cuisine. From Milan to Sydney, with more openings around the world already planned for the coming years: the refectories for the poor under the signature of chef Massimo Bottura have now grown to twelve and continue to grow everywhere. Their format combines assistance and solidarity for the most vulnerable, quality food, and the fight against waste. In beautiful places, not sad and dark ones.

Behind every man who has succeeded without ever giving up on thinking big, looking at others and not just at his own navel, there is always a woman, probably bigger than him: it's a banal truth. And I saw confirmation of this from the fundamental role that Lara Gilmore , Massimo Bottura's wife , a dynamic American transplanted to the concreteness of Modena, has played in Bottura's career, today the number one chef in Europe and the most famous in the world. Not just for his cuisine. Not just for the buzz surrounding the great circus of starred menus, but above all for an extraordinary initiative against food waste and in favor of the most disadvantaged , including those at the table: the construction of a network of Franciscan Refettorios throughout the world.

We currently have twelve locations (in Italy: Milan, Bologna, Modena, Naples), in nine countries and four continents, but several more are planned in different parts of the world. Starting in Bethlehem, where Bottura and his wife have always dreamed of opening their refectory. Thousands of meals a day, cooked by over 200 chefs, are offered free of charge to the poor, thanks to close collaboration with volunteers and various organizations working in the area where the refectory is located. In London, for example, for Refettorio Felix , created with the English charity The Felix Project , 50 chefs participate in the project and 2 meals are distributed daily.

The Food for Soul Foundation , which the Botturas established with the idea of ​​creating a truly global network of Refettorios for the poor—modern and welcoming social soup kitchens—deserves gratitude, attention, and best wishes for a long life and the multiplication of its locations.

Bottura, inspired and advised step by step by his wife, starts with a manifesto of his indignation, with statistics on food waste around the world (starting with the scandal of 1,3 billion tons of excellent food ending up in the garbage every year), and with his organization Food for Soul (literally Food for the Soul), he plans to open many Refettorios, where the food recovered from waste will be used to feed the poor and people experiencing temporary economic hardship.

We also really like the motivation behind this gesture. Bottura says: "A chef like me, instead of using his popularity to earn more, should exploit his image to create something different." On the side, for once, of those who have nothing, or almost nothing. Furthermore, Bottura , like many people who have become rich and famous in the Anglo-Saxon world, feels a duty to "give back" some of his wealth and success to the less fortunate . And he does so also through a publishing venture that has led him to write a book that I consider invaluable for the Non sprecare community: Bread is Gold (Phaidon – L'Ippocampo), a true cookbook with high-quality and simple dishes of anti-waste cuisine. Bottura has taken the model of the restaurant—cooking, service, beauty, conviviality—and applied it to a social context, using food as a tool against waste and exclusion.

A beautiful message from the Botturas, also for the famous chef's fellow chefs , who are often as greedy (with money) as they are vain. Finally, Bottura is an ideal ambassador for our revolutionary philosophy, Don't Waste, like many of his colleagues in Norway who are working in a thousand ways (including with the Don't Waste menus) to reduce the costs of the scandalous food waste. Bottura can and must do it , and we will follow him step by step, hoping that many will support him in opening one, ten, one hundred Refettorios. In Italy, in Europe, around the world. Waste is everywhere.

Read also

• Ruben, the restaurant where you can eat for 1 euro
• People's Kitchens in Bologna: four locations and hundreds of meals for the poor served every day.
• Don Gualtiero's soup kitchen: Michelin-starred chefs serve the poor.