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Bella Dentro, the first anti-waste fruit shop arrives in Milan – Italian Cuisine

Bella Dentro: in Milan, in the Caiazzo area, has opened the first fruit shop that fights food waste by challenging the logic of the market

A project against food waste can it be "sexy" as well as useful? The boys of Beautiful Inside they succeeded. And they did so, thanks to an evident urgency and passion, a couple of years ago, traveling with their apecar covered with grass the streets of Milan and today opening, in the Caiazzo area, the first store with the Bella Dentro brand. Here you can buy them "ugly" but good fruit and vegetables, fresh ed dried, and also some excellent ones jams. All while saving – for now – 46762 kg of fruit and vegetables, as we read – green on white – in the LED sign that stands out on a wall of the shop. Food that otherwise would have been thrown away, just for not respecting those aesthetic standards that the market imposes, but what create enormous damage to farmers, the environment and the economy.

Bella Inside, this is how the idea was born

That Camilla is Luca they had courage, you can guess from their personal stories. Both are just over thirty. A few years ago they decided to leave a promising career in the advertising and business sectors respectively for throw themselves into an enterprise that not even they know where it will lead them. The only thing they are convinced of is that it is the right thing to do. They understand this by reading an article on food waste in the world: according to the FAO, 1.3 billion tons of food are thrown away every year, equal to one third of the total production destined for human consumption. The only waste of food in Italy has a economic value that wanders around 13 billion euros per year.

Bella Dentro, “in the field” against food waste

Thus was born the idea of Bella Dentro. Although before embarking on the enterprise, the two boys moved to Emilia Romagna where, for a while, they conducted investigations, also being laborers. "Going" to the field "was the only way to touch the dynamics that govern the agricultural supply chain. Over time we have managed to get in touch with almost all the players in the agri-food chain and even talk to some buyers from the large-scale distribution , explains Camilla, still almost incredulous that she had succeeded.

The two winning cards of the project

Bella Dentro's idea works because it absorbs a slice of the market that would otherwise be in total loss. In fact, they buy at a fair price directly from farmers or cooperatives that part of fruit and vegetable production that is good, but which is rejected by cooperatives and large retailers for aesthetic reasons. The fruit comes mainly from Emilia Romagna, apart from citrus fruits that come from Sicily and apples from Trentino Alto Adige. Vegetables, on the other hand, come from all over Italy, with Lazio in the lead. Another winning aspect of the project is the communication, captivating and ironic, which aims to deconstruct a rhetoric of the product (which must be aesthetically perfect to be also good) to which we are all a bit addicted now.

Shop and transformation workshop, now we think big

At the end of last year, Camilla and Luca started the second phase of the project, with the entry into society of the Social Veture Giordano dell’Amore Foundation, which made it possible to start thinking big. Not only for having taken root with a shop window in front of which the patrons and the inhabitants of the neighborhood stop curious, but also for another reason. With the shop – and the inclusion in the group of a new travel companion, Giuditta – the transformation laboratory, the real strength of their architecture, because it will allow them to collect ever-increasing quantities of fruit and vegetables without having to worry about them rotting in warehouses. "To save the product you have to free yourself from perishable: transforming it is the best way to keep it longer. This is how the line of jams was born, but above all of dried products .

Camilla and Luca, faithful to the line from start to finish

A curious choice is that of drying courgettes, aubergines and cucumbers, but which perfectly reflects the philosophy behind Bella Dentro. «While defects are hidden with jams, those imperfections remain visible in dried products, as if to remind us once again that to be good, vegetables or fruit don't have to be beautiful. In addition, no other ingredients are consumed and the nutritional values are maintained unaltered . Even that of the transformation laboratory was not a random choice. This is located in Codogno and is managed by The Workshop, a social cooperative that for various reasons is also… beautiful inside. “It was theirs that convinced us inclusive approach: in the laboratory they work approx a dozen boys and girls with disabilities. They do with people what we try to do with fruit and vegetables .

The menu with emojis also arrives in Italy – Italian Cuisine

The first restaurant made it in London, in 2016, then Gaggan in Bangkok, the most famous. Today in Ivrea a young chef tries again. Would you order from a menu written only of emoticons?

The menu written with the emoticons looks like a game for Millennials, instead it is reality. The most famous is brought to the table in Bangkok by the multi-starred chef Gaggan Anand, an Indian transplanted to Thailand.

The Gaggan menu

The menu at Gaggan is unique, a tasting of 25 mouthfuls, represented by as many emojis. 25 are too many? To quote the chef, if Pink Floyd can make a 20 minute long song without stewing, he can play his progressive cooking for three hours (far from boring). A hop on and off as on a roller coaster, no classic sequence from delicate to main course, no wine pairing, impossible with these flavors. Edible plastic bags, 100% eggplant biscuits, versions of nigiri and tacos … chocolates that hide a unique spiciness, matcha tea which, however, is not made of matcha … The first dozen bites are eaten with your hands, it flows quickly, then the cutlery slows down and the dishes inspired by the concept of curry (its scent, flavor, smell, but never in a didactic way) finally slow down again and you get to dessert.
Difficult to understand the menu made up of emojis is more of a divertissement, also because much from Gaggan one does not order à la carte and therefore the tasting route is in any case predetermined.

Did he invent it? Actually they had thought about it before in London, at The Little Yellow Door Notting Hill. It was 2016, the year of the explosion of WhatApp and the idea was to become more engaging, making customers order via chat. It is not easy, reads the reviews, to understand if what will arrive will be a plate, a salad or a sandwich. But fun and medically disruptive.

The menu of the restaurant The Yellow Door @Instagram

With the usual delay, Italy also arrives the first menu made of emoji, given to Gaggan by chef Marco Rossi of La Mugnaia restaurant is in the heart of Ivrea, without false modesty. "Journey to the center of taste on a spring evening" will be a surprise dinner organized for Thursday, May 16, at 20: 30.11 bring each one told by a small Emoticon. Who will be able to guess all the dishes served?

The virtual sommelier arrives with the Combivino app – Italian Cuisine

The smartphone application that recommends the perfect wine or beer for one or more courses, so as not to miss a match both at home and in the restaurant

The time you wanted to make a good impression without asking the sommelier for advice, that Apulian turnip-based dinner to which they invited you and you wanted to bring the right wine, that delicious dish, but ruined by the wrong choice of wine or beer. It happens to all those who have not had the time or the desire to take a sommelier course, but would like to be infallible in the combination. This is why the app Combivino, the first application that combines food and wine or beer, has already achieved enormous success, achieving more than 10,000 downloads.

How the app works

Practically Combivino is a virtual sommelier. Just one click to download the application, free and entirely made in Italy, and start trying the combinations of food and wine or beer. There are 1500 foods or dishes that have already been surveyed by the experts put in place by Alessio Papasergio, creator of Combivino. Together with Federica Zevi she combined the dishes with 500 types of wine and with the help of Salvatore Cosenza and the Beer Taster Union, he also added to the bouquet 76 beer styles with the relative descriptions.

The game is simple: just enter the name of a dish or a main ingredient, the system therefore recommends a number of whites, reds, bubbles and craft beers. Based on what you prefer, you choose the one that comes closest to your tastes. IS there is no lack of desserts, which are combined with sweet wines and more, because there are also numerous combinations with beers that could amaze.

There is no shortage of "advanced" functions, from the Multiport combination to the Tasting option. In the first case, the application helps to find the right combination for a wine that supports the entire meal, for Tasting, however, the system conditions the choice of the second wine based on the first that has already been chosen by the user.

An example? Try to insert a menu based on carbonara and lamb, the typical Roman trattoria menu: here the virtual sommelier of Combivino responds with 4 types of bubbles, a sparkling red, an intense rosé, two whites and a red. To this are added also the technical data sheets, which help to better understand the matching criteria, as well as advice on the right glass for tasting both wine and beer. In short, it is enough to waste some time not only to learn the basics of pairing, but also to get a basic wine and beer culture, which will help in conversations and tastings.