“I need to know the story of a food. I must know where it comes from. I have to imagine the hands that cultivated, worked, and cooked what I eat.”

Carlo Petrini

Carlo Petrini, also known as Carlin, began writing about food and wine in Italian periodicals and newspapers in 1977 (later actively participating in the founding, with Stefano Bonilli, of Gambero Rosso), the same year Gabriele Bonci, the king of sheet pan pizza, was born in Rome. Nine years later, in 1986, while Carlin founded Arcigola, later transformed into Slow Food in 1989, in Piedmont, Gabriele understood what he wanted to do when he grew up: “As a child, I wanted to be a farmer, like my grandfather. Then, at the age of nine, something important happened to me and since then I was convinced that I had to become a cook.” Petrini and Bonci, so far yet so close, belong to different generations and have had different life paths, but there are many common characteristics between them: perseverance, love for the land and nature, respect for farmers, eating well, a return to ancient and authentic flavors, as well as consistency, boldness, and audacity in their choices and actions.

At the Beginning, There Was the Farmer

One must go back more than 50 years to remember that Italy was mostly a nation of farmers, people whose lives were marked by the changing seasons and work in the fields, by breeding, births, and deaths of backyard animals and livestock. An archaic world that risked disappearing when, after the war, the countryside depopulated and farming became a laborious job where one worked hard, earned little, and, above all, what was produced was not valued because it was defeated by multinational corporations and an increasingly globalized market, even in nature.

With the 90s and the new millennium, something begins to change, a return to rediscovering agricultural values, environment, and eco-sustainability emerges, giving rise to G.A.S. (solidarity purchasing groups that provide quality at fair prices only for retailers or end consumers). A new way of practicing agriculture, organic and natural, capable of protecting biodiversity starts to gain ground. While Petrini carried out his comprehensive policy of returning to the land, Bonci did it his way, bringing the entire world of small producers he had sought throughout Italy onto his pizza and bread. “I grew up among the fields cultivated by my grandfather and the family kitchens: everything that came from the land and animals was utilized by the women in the family. From their teachings, I learned to use and refine the senses, to distinguish scents, to taste seeking flavor, to understand what was good and what was not, to appreciate the raw product and transform it into something else. I started from the land, moved onto the kitchen, and around it, I built the world of pizza and bread.”