From Zero to 3,000

Trentino Food Tales

Trentino’s Michelin-starred chefs have selected almost forty young — and very young — chefs from an equal number of restaurants, dotted throughout the region at a variety of altitudes. They are now part of a network operating as a sort of research and innovation workshop. Between 2021 and 2023, they will offer first the region’s locals, and then the rest of the world, the chance to discover the heights that Trentino’s cuisine is capable of reaching.

Selection criteria: a sense of belonging from the young men and women who dedicate their lives to their community, expressing this through dishes which transform seasonal local products using recipes from their family history.

The aim is to mutually influence each other, promoting inspiration, creativity and sharing. Trentino Food Tales, a project initiated in 2018, has produced a Charter of Values which emphasises ethics, teamwork, curiosity and heart.

Plating up the landscape, with a scattering of sweet flowers

Within the TFT network of young talent, the range of influences cannot be underestimated: naturally, there are those of family, latitude and altitude, but there are also influences from the rest of Italy and the world thanks to the chefs who have chosen to live and teach in Trentino. So, for example, we find recipes in which mortandela — a smoked pork product from Val di Non — meets spicy Japanese radish to create a sublime new flavour; or, equally, a dish garnished with the larch flowers that the young chefs would have enjoyed as sweet childhood treats. Essentially, this is a mission to rediscover traditional raw materials, to transform them and to innovate with cooking methods that aim to save energy — using low temperatures or ultrasonic cooking for example — while making the most of any so-called waste. After all, knowledge, study, research and creativity can transform any waste material into an astonishing taste experience. Because a chef is, at heart, an alchemist of flavour.

The stars

Michelin-starred Chefs: Alfio Ghezzi, Alessandro Gilmozzi, Stefano Ghetta, Paolo Donei, Davide Rangoni, Sabino Fortunato, Giovanni D’Alitta, Edoardo Fumagalli.

Stellar young chefs: Gianluigi Mandico, Fabio Coppola, Samuele e Mattia Augurio, Sebastian Sartorelli, Moreno e Matteo Zeni, Andrea Preti, Simone Iob, Mattia Sicher, Simone Gilmozzi, Luca Dell’Eva, Simone Dellantonio, Stefano Tait, Daniele Tomasi, Sara Bertocchi, Tommaso Bellante, Stefano Croce, Luca Zotti, Massimo Battisti, Sandro Favè, Mattia e Vittorio Riz, Martino Rossi, Matteo Zanella, Elena Vian, Alessandro Vinante, Pietro Lorenz, Giulia Segna, Matthias Trottner, Gianpaolo  e Roberto Burba, Alberto Pagliani, Michele Perlot, Marco Bortolotti, Giada Miori, Gaetano Bonanno, Thomas Beltramolli e Simone Ubaldi, Manuel Merlo e Sofia Omodeo.

Credit images: photo by Matteo Carassale for Cook/Corriere della Sera + photo Trentino Marketing archive

Handmade porcelain plates by Vero Lab & Shop di Veronica Vianini - Porcelain Workshop