The culinary page of la Repubblica opens up to So Wine So Food
On the splendid terrace of MACRO of via Nizza in Rome we have met Licia Granello. Facing a great pen of food journalism, our first consideration comes out spontaneously: nowadays we live in a moment when everyone can improvise wine and food critic thanks to the Internet, blogs and socials, but which social role does the real wine and food critic have? Licia Granello immediately stops us and clarifies: “I am a food journalist, not a wine and food critic”. She explains us the difference and tells us that wine and food critics review restaurants, while she deals with food in all its shapes and phases, from production to dishes. Nowadays it appears clearer and clearer how the attitude towards food has become neurotic: a lively hurry about presenting the dishes, the stars and the glasses of guides that does not reflect wine and food experience. It is a phenomenon that Ms. Granello says she deeply hates. But food experience is much deeper and, besides the nutritional, sensorial and tasting part, presents significant social, cultural and anthropological characteristics. It is important to contextualize food, noticing what it is behind at various levels: food is enormously conditioned by where, how, when, with whom it is eaten; without forgetting our personal history and to use her words: each palate is a small world. Nowadays people talk a lot about extreme healthy choices but one needs to reflect on the fact that eating healthy food could not make any sense if one does that sad and lonely: it can be much more damaging than eating quality food, well cooked, and mostly eaten in good company, loving each other. The page she had worked on in the last few years is retiring and so we ask Licia Granello which her programs for her future are. She answers that besides teaching at University with a course called Alfabeto Complesso dell’Alimentazione – Lezioni di Guerriglia Alimentare (Complex Alphabet of Alimentation – Lessons of Alimentary War) held to create food consumers that are fully aware, she would like to dedicate herself to writing a new book and, maybe, to a TV show… as long as it is no reality nor recipe tutorial.
“I believe talking about food only as a showcase is not enough”
– Licia Granello –
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