Milano, A Melting Pot At The Heart Of Food Innovation

#FOODINNOVATION #FOODTECH

Source: Marco Gualtieri - Founder and Chairman - Seeds&Chips

26-06-2018

During the 13th and 14th centuries, you’d know you were at a dinner party of some level of esteem if, at the conclusion of your meal, you were given a piece of fur to clean off your hands. If it were a very high-level event, you may even have had a live rabbit tied to your chair with ribbons to serve the same purpose. However in 1491, a certain Leonardo da Vinci thought there might be a better way both in terms of hygiene, presentation, aesthetics and for not the first time, he decided to innovate. Thus, the napkin was born.

While it may seem as natural to use now as the use of cutlery, plates, or even a table, napkins were not an instant success when da Vinci first unveiled them, so to speak. People were puzzled, unimpressed: some people even wore them on their hands because they weren’t quite sure what to do with them. Leonardo himself was dismayed, and feared that no one would adopt the napkin in common usage, and that we’d be doomed to carry around rabbit hides to all of our meals instead of his tovagliolo. Perhaps he need not have worried so much at all, as the napkin quickly took its place at the table.

When people think of Italy, one of the first images that come to mind is food, and the forms that food can take are seemingly endless. Some might say that food and the activities related to it is our national pastime, and one of the very pillars upon which the Italian identity is based. Indeed, this is probably true: it’s common to have entire conversations that revolve around food within the country, and Italians are known to sit down for lunch and immediately start discussing what they’ll eat for dinner. While regional dishes vary dramatically the attachment that Italians have to the cuisine of their area is profound. But it’s not just the food we eat that makes Italy such an important culinary pillar, it’s the innovations that food has inspired throughout our history.

Because food is never just about food, is it? Food is an archive, a story told through a taste, a reflection of both time and place. Da Vinci’s napkin is telling because it shows that even in those early days, food was both a landscape and a medium for progress and innovation. Techniques themselves would evolve along with the availability of certain ingredients that might have never before been seen, making our dishes a conduit for cultural exchange as well as a focal point for experimentation. And nowhere have these been more obvious than in Milano.

Lombardia is the largest agricultural region in Italy and as its capital, Milano has made significant contributions to the library of Italian cuisine. From risotto and cotoletta alla Milanese to osso buco to panettone, there is no shortage of dishes that originate in the area and many of those have become as recognizable as the pastas and pizzas that bear the mark of the Italian culinary heritage around the world. However, Milano has come to be characterized more by its industrial development and its entrepreneurial spirit, and it is this aspect of the identity of the city and larger region which has become its most recognizable attribute. Over the course of its history, Milano has been a meeting point for different cultures both from within Italy and the world at large, and its evolution into a global city reflects this rich history.

The development of the city has been unique among all others in the country, and it’s long been a crossroads between cultures both within Italy and from around the world. This melting pot makes Milano an ideal global hub for food innovation, where the legacy of EXPO Milano 2015 and the collective efforts towards achieving sustainable and resilient cities have embraced both the importance of tradition and the necessity of innovation. Milano is rapidly becoming home to emerging ecosystems of startups, companies, institutions, and investors, and each are contributing to a renaissance of the culture of entrepreneurship, invention, and food appreciation that makes the city so special.

A (Very) Brief History of Time

Coming from the Roman Mediolanum, Milano has signified a land in the middle of it all since the very beginning. While it’s impossible to condense the history of a city into such a short space, the history of Milano has had two important currents that have helped make it ripe as the city of the future, and the city of food innovation. First, after the Emperor Charlemagne declared himself the first King of Lombardy in 774, Milano became a key part of the Holy Roman Empire and its position between the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas, as well as at the Southern point of the Alps in the Po valley, made it an important point of trade and commerce. As a midpoint between Venice and Genova, Milano became a hub for goods, services, and people seeking work to support an emerging global economy. While the industrial development is known as ‘the Miracle, that would follow the end of World War Two, was fundamental to the modern day development of the city into a financial capital, it was built upon this long-standing tradition of trade, commerce, and entrepreneurship that dates back centuries.

Second, the historical influx and movement of people seeking work in the silk and textile industries that developed as part of this strategic position helped Milano to grow into a city of immigrants, both from within Italy and from other parts of the world. While the impact of these population shifts was felt across a range of social institutions, it was also an important aspect of the development of a distinct food culture in and around the city. Indeed, the iconic risotto allo zafferano relies not only on rice that would have been introduced to the peninsula in the 13th century via the Moors, but on the golden stems of the crocus that made its way to Italy via the mountains of Iran. Likewise for dishes like the cotoletta, which more than likely owes its presence in the canon to the Austrians that ruled the region in the 10th century.

Later on, in the 17th century, the Austro-Hungarians would return to Lombardy and with them bring the michetta, a bread that bears a striking resemblance to the ‘Kaisersemmel’, or emperor’s bread, and which the Milanese cleverly renamed to denote a ‘crumb’. But it was not only foods from far afield that contributed to the development of a distinctly Milanese culinary context: workers coming from the southern Puglia region brought with them the recipe for panzerotto, a stuffed and fried dough pocket, and it soon became one of the staples of the food culture in Milano. Indeed, Panificio Luini, which has been serving the adopted dish since the Luini family emigrated from Puglia in 1949, is one of the most popular Instagram hashtags for visitors to the city. Food in Milano is unique among other cities in Italy for both its modernity as well as its faithfulness to an ethos of unfailing quality. Indeed it’s most famous maestro, Gualtiero Marchesi, could have been speaking for the city when he said, “If I had to worry about all the comments that have been made about me, I wouldn’t have arrived anywhere.” It is unabashedly idiosyncratic, and all the better off for it.

Expo: The Emergence of the Resilient City

The decades after the so-called ‘Miracle’ were a struggle, as a decline in industrial development, and a sagging global economy left the city floundering. By the 1980’s, even the vibrant artistic atmosphere that this vacuum had given rise to in the decade preceding was petering out, with the superficial hedonism of the ‘paninari’ gradually receding and a dramatic shift in political forces that continued to build upon the city’s strategic and financial position but undermined its social development.

All of that changed in dramatic fashion in 2015, when EXPO Milano opened its gates in an unprecedented show of innovation and possibility that drew millions of visitors and a new wave of investment and opportunity back to the city. I have previously written about the fundamental importance of EXPO to the genesis of the food innovation and sustainability movement, and how the concatenation of EXPO, the development of the UN SDGs, and the signing of the Paris Agreement shaped the course of global business, but it is also important to note how crucial this experience was to the city itself. While EXPO was, according to some, “a sign that Italy was back on its feet”, it was a critical step on the path that Milano as a city had been on for nearly a decade before that. The skyline had already started to change, with skyscrapers taking their place and new developments like the City Life and Porta Nuova districts springing to life, and a twofold increase in green spaces and ecological initiatives. The arrival of EXPO also helped to boost an increasing tourism economy that helped bring even greater attention to Milano as a key city in Italy not only for business but for experiences. With more than 20 million visitors over five months in 2015 for EXPO, Milano showed the world that it was an engine of change, innovation, and possibilities.

With the theme of EXPO Milano, ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’, the city reclaimed its historic place as a global crossroads for food and built upon this legacy with an emphasis on developing new systems to sustainably grow, feed, and renew the planet. Highlighting the best qualities of the city, the pavilions at the newly built FieraMilano explored how to build a better food system through integration, cross pollination, and technological innovation. The introduction and signing of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact in 2015 was an immediate indication that EXPO was no flash in the pan, and to date the Pact has been signed by 167 cities around the world, with over 450 million people now on the course to a sustainable urban food system. The importance of water, which was a fundamental part of the fourth edition of the Summit this year, is reflected in the forthcoming Centrale dell’Acqua, a museum and learning space dedicated to the importance of clean water to human survival and development. Sustainability has become the cornerstone of urban, social, and financial development in Milan, as well as the explosion of a vibrant food culture that reflects this renaissance.

A Changing City in a Changing World

For a city that has always survived and indeed prospered on the clever use of integrating the global into the local, Milano is poised to become one of the most advanced cities on the planet with an ethos that matches its prosperity. The extraordinary transformation is as apparent throughout the city as it is on the tables in restaurants, bars, and cafes, with a series of initiatives that are meant to “build social cohesion” by developing green infrastructure, housing, and transportation networks. Former industrial areas are also being reinvented with former warehouses and manufacturing plants being converted into cultural centers and unique housing opportunities for a growing population of artists, startups, and innovators coming from around Italy and the world to be a part of the next wave of Milano’s development. The city is taking its commitment to resilience seriously, with initiatives aimed at combating climate change and ensuring equitable access to public resources. Hints of this are popping up everywhere, with the orders for electric buses completed and expected on the roads in early 2019, and more initiatives aimed at reducing pollution and easing traffic on the way. The Bosco Verticale, a modern day Hanging Gardens that anchor an evolving city skyline, are the quintessential blend of culture, technology, and creativity that has become the trademark of Milano.

With the political landscape of Europe changing rapidly, Milano stands as one of the potential centers for global commerce, production, and finance in the next few years, particularly as the realignment in the wake of Brexit could remake the face of the continent. These changing winds could be a blessing to the city, as its newfound confidence makes it a real contender for the businesses and institutions that now find themselves looking at alternative solutions. Indeed, efforts to make Milan and Italy a more attractive place for investment could be a deciding factor in the development of the country as a whole. While this is certainly cause for optimism, our continuing efforts to develop Milano must not lose sight of its importance as a hub for innovation, and for the kind of fusion that has given it such a unique identity, particular in its food culture. These are assets that will assist us all in building a food system for the future, as we once again look to borrow the best of what has crossed our path with the brightest of what we have developed.

Milano has always been a melting pot of culture, and the opportunity to make it a melting pot for food innovation is a natural progression of that heritage. After all, Da Vinci didn’t stop at the napkin: along with his rules of table etiquette (including such gestures as not turning one’s back on a table companion, and not engaging in fisticuffs), his notebooks were filled with sketches and explanations of tools like the duck press, elaborate menus, and the rationale for a plant-based diet. His time in Milano, from 1482 until 1499 and at the very height of the melting pot, was among the most important in his life and perhaps one of the most important eras in food innovation itself. The legacy of the city is in part his legacy: perhaps his Last Supper was just the first of many more to come, each more ingenious than the last. 

Marco Gualtieri - Founder and Chairman - Seeds&Chips