Romagna food festival breaks records

150,000 people celebrated wonderful food at FestArtusiana

Since 1997, Forlimpopoli, Romagna has held an annual gastronomic event dedicated to Pellegrino Artusi "Father of Italian Cookery"  For over a week every night between 7pm and midnight, Casa Artusi and the historical center of this small town come alive as a "city of taste." For the Festa Artusiana.

Streets, alleys, courtyards and squares become stages for food stands featuring Artusi’s dishes, exhibitions, performances, multi-media productions, tastings and gastronomic tours, concerts, children’s events, cultural events, art displays, and more.

And, last week foodies from all over the world swarmed to Forlimpopolo to eat, drink, buy, learn and be merry! And with free entrance for everybody, unlike many food festivals.

Music was a melodious background around the town’s citadel where more than 150 stalls opened up for business together with 40 open-air restaurants, which together with the 11 local ones, served massive portions of amazing food and wine every evening for 9 warm edible nights.

The theme of this year’s festival was ‘Italian cuisine in the world’ and certainly the world was drawn to it. Stalls came from Escoffier’s birthplace in France, from Spain, Austria, Croatia, Spain – even the Phillipines. You could even buy and eat Escoffier’s famous Peach Melba – so clearly Artusi is not afraid of competition.

The key to the celebration was, of course, Pellegrino Artusi’s cookbook which has done so much to popularize Italian food since the 19^th century – and it STILL isn’t out of print.

So, everywhere you were able to buy and consume delicious specialities from the Artusi cookbook – listed by recipe number AND at extraordinarily low prices.

There were, of course, conferences about food where experts on Italian food such as Massimo Montanari, Simone Cinotto, Emanuela Scarpellini presented – but above all the festival was about enjoying Pellegrino Artusi’s legacy to the full.

And pride of place was given to really local seasonal foods and great wines such as the Mora Romagna pork, the Squacquerone di Romagna cheese, Romagna peach and nectarine, the Romagna shallot, Volpina pears and the amazing DOC Sangiovese di Romagna, DOCG Albano di Romagna and DOC Trebbiano di Romagna.

With such a local culinary treasure-chest, It’s no wonder that Pellegrino Artusi hailed from here.

Great jazz performances, the great wines, the superb weather, the range of wonderful foods and the extraordinarily friendly atmosphere made it a Festartisiana to be remembered.

Valere Tjolle

See also www.bestofromagna.com
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