Refettori Bottura: soup kitchens designed by a great chef

From Milan to Sydney, with other openings planned throughout the world in the coming years. Starting with Bethlehem. refectories for the poor with the chef's signature Massimo Bottura They've grown to fifteen and continue to grow everywhere. Their format combines assistance and solidarity for the most vulnerable, quality food, and the fight against waste. In beautiful, not sad, and dark, places.

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 older than him: it's a banal truth. And I had confirmation of this from the fundamental role that Lara gilmore, the Massimo Bottura's wife, a volcanic American transplanted to the concreteness of Modena, has had a significant impact on Bottura's career, today he is the number one chef in Europe and the most famous in the world. Not only for his cuisine. Not only for the buzz of the great circus of starred menus, but above all for a extraordinary operation against the food waste and in favor of the last, even those of the table: the construction of a network of Franciscan refectories, all over the world.

For the moment we are at fifteen (in Italy: Milan, Bologna, Modena, Naples), but several more openings 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, with a strong collaboration with the world of voluntary. In London, for example, for the Felix Refectory, created with the English charity The Felix Project, there are 50 chefs participating in the project and 2 meals are distributed every day.

The Foundation Food for the soul The project, which the Botturas set up with the idea of ​​creating a truly global network of Refettorios for the poor—modern, welcoming 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 from the manifesto of his indignation, with the numbers on food waste in the world (starting from the scandal of 1,3 billion tons of excellent food that ends up, every year, in the garbage), and with his organization Food for the soul (literally Food for the Soul) plans to open many Refettorios, where the poor and people experiencing temporary economic hardship will be fed using food recovered from waste.

I 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 universe, feels the duty to "give back" some of his wealth and success to the less fortunateAnd he also does so through an editorial activity that led him to write a book that I consider invaluable for the Non sprecare community: Bread is gold (Phaidon editions - L'Ippocampo), a real recipe book with high-quality and simple dishes of anti-waste cuisine.

A nice message, that of the Botturas, also for the colleghi of the famous private 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 their 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.

(The images are taken from the Facebook page . Food for Soul)

Read also:

• Fighting food waste: how Denmark is a world leader. A lesson for Italy.
• Food waste: A law has been passed to simplify donations. But it doesn't target wasteful people.
• Ivana Di Martino is running a thousand kilometers against food waste. Go, Ivana!