Terra Madre, #1-4

Slow Food's international conference is like drinking from a fire hose

When you ask someone what it’s like to attend Terra Madre, the biannual international Slow Food conference in Turino, Italy, they will almost always struggle to find a way to explain it.

Terra Madre difficult to describe because it’s so many things. There are seminars and presentations, usually several happening at any one time in different places. Thousands of people come from all over the world to share and to learn their Slow Food experiences. There are tastings and samplings of local fare, and foods and drink from just about everywhere else. There are booths and exhibits for countries and regions and specific foods and food families, as well as static and interactive art. There are displays of fruits and vegetables that are at once familiar and completely foreign — literally and figuratively!

Plus, it happens concurrently with Salone del Gusto, a huge national tradeshow with foods from all across Italy. And they all come with their own tastings and presentations and events.

It’s an enormous buffet of food and information, with people from all around the globe.

I attended my first Terra Madre in 2014, as a sponsored delegate with Terry, Brian, and several others from St. Louis. The local chapter picked up most of our travel, and the national organization provided rooms and transportation onsite. (When I got to my hotel room I took the small cot next to the big bed, which meant I didn’t need to share it with the other two fellows who arrived later.)

Aside from the terribly long parade of flags that first, exhausted evening, I spent the entire time trying to absorb as much information as I could. I met people from across the country and around the world I still count as friends, and came back nearly overwhelmed with so much information and too many ideas.

I went back in 2016 as a paying delegate, meaning I paid for all travel and hotel, but stayed in the US delegation hotel. In 2022 I went again as a paying delegate, but stayed in an AirBnB offsite.

Rather than try to describe what I saw and learned and what inspired me, I’ll share my two-page list of ideas I wrote down right after the event, while I was still in Italy. (Those who know me will assume I bought this notebook in Italy, and those who know me really well will guess that I treasure it but haven’t used it for anything else since then.)

Looking at the list now, I can see I’ve touched on most everything either personally or at Tale to Table. We’ve made and served “lunchables” at markets, we’ve made gnocco frito at our Italian Street Food class, Kate has created her own olive mixtures, and we even made bombettas — I don’t understand why we Americans don’t do anything at all with thinly sliced and crisply cooked pork. We carry tartelli crackers in the shop, little knotted crackers that are crunchy on the outside but soft inside. I’ve baked bread and eaten more and different beans and hosted vermouth tastings and even made salami cream (using pepperoni) .

And if you look near the top of the second page, you’ll see “Master of New Food Thinking.” Which I’ll start in just over a month.

Phase One of this Italian adventure starts on Sunday when I travel to my apartment in Bra (via Chicago-Madrid-Milan by plane and Turino by train), arriving mid-afternoon Monday. I’ll have all day Tuesday to find my way around town and start figuring out what I need for my apartment, and then on Wednesday I get to attend an afternoon and evening of special events at the school. The rest of the week will be Terra Madre #4 as I commute from my place in Bra to Turino.

Lots more to come!