Your Menu in Turin, Where Slow Food Was Born and Chocolate Conquers the World

The Reality of a Restaurant in Turin

Turin is the city where the Slow Food movement was born: here food is not just nutrition, it is philosophy. But explaining that philosophy to 4 million tourists a year is a challenge that traditional menus do not solve. A French person crosses the border and sits in your trattoria in the Quadrilatero Romano: he doesn't know what bagna càuda is (a hot sauce of garlic and anchovies for dipping seasonal vegetables) nor what agnolotti del plin are (stuffed pasta that is closed by 'pinching', from the Piedmontese 'plin'). A German seeks the experience of tartufo d'Alba but doesn't understand that the market price changes every week and depends on the harvest. An American in San Salvario orders gianduiotti but doesn't know that Turin invented chocolate and hazelnut paste 150 years before Nutella. Piedmontese cuisine is the most refined in Italy along with Emilia's, but also the hardest to explain: vitello tonnato (veal with tuna sauce), finanziera (chicken offal in sweet and sour sauce), bagna càuda (the Piedmontese fondue of anchovies)... These are dishes that tourists won't order if they don't understand. Piedmont has 35 Michelin stars and restaurants like Del Cambio (1757) have been serving since before the unification of Italy. But without a multilingual menu, you're losing the international clientele from the Book Fair, the Salone del Gusto (the largest Slow Food event in the world), and automotive companies (FIAT, Stellantis) that bring executives from all over the planet. And the bicerin, the vermouth, the gianduia... The coffee and aperitif culture in Turin is as important as the cuisine and needs explanation to be appreciated.