Le Fooding in Milan and The Feast of London Bridge-Zester Daily

Europe's Food Feasts

Le Grand Fooding in Milan and The Feast on the Bridge in London celebrate good food and bonhomie.

By Carla Capalbo | Thursday, 11 November 2010 | 09:11

LeFooding's Davide Scabin presents small plastic vials containing warm tomato sauce, pasta and cheese

In the explosion of ideas and events that brighten the contemporary food scene, two recent happenings, in Milan and in London, characterize different aspects of the gastro-spectrum. Both have social consciences, aim to bring quality food experiences to large numbers of people, raise consciousness about good food and ingredients, and make group dining exciting and participatory.

Le Fooding, a Paris-based organization launched by French food critic Alexandre Cammas in 1999, publishes an annual guide to its favorite restaurants in Paris and France in a style diametrically opposed to the grey anonymity of the Michelin's red guide. "We want to contrast the formal hold of the Michelin's hierarchies, which seem to us out of date and out of touch, by celebrating innovative young French chefs who are writing the latest chapter of our gastronomic history," says Cammas. Le Fooding's amusing, irreverent website highlights these differences: Click on pictures of colorful personalities and discover where each prefers to eat, from chef and writer Anthony Bourdain to fashion designer Kenzo Takada.

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Inaki Aizpitarte prepares his dish outdoors at Le Fooding

Bubbly, cheese and chocolates

Le Fooding also organizes occasional sorties for its coterie of chefs that are more like city fun fairs than conventional fine dining experiences. After a successful summer Fooding event in 2009 at Brooklyn's PS1, this fall saw the first Italian event. Le Grand Fooding 'Extra vergine' Milano was held by night in a disused factory compound in the Tortona zone of the Italian design capital. The format was similar to New York's: a cast of 10 of today's cutting-edge chefs from France, Italy and beyond set up camp in warehouses. With progressive music and light shows 1,300 paying guests roamed the compound, stopping to eat the finger food each chef prepared. (The 25 Euro admission included the chefs' dishes, a small glass of Veuve Clicquot, San Pellegrino soft drinks, sumptuous Cioccolati Italiani chocolate ice creams, French raw-milk cheeses, Nespresso coffee and more).

Out in the courtyard, a line formed to sample Iñaki Aizpitarte's take on the northern Italian classic, vitello tonnato. The young chef from Le Chateaubriand bistrot in Paris served chunks of broiled veal fillet and raw turnip slices accented with an intense sea-sauce of baccalà, or salt-cod, liver. Inside, René and Nadine Redzepi of Noma, in the top spot on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, made what René described as a cross between "medieval finger food and a Mexican tamale." Six types of plumped biodynamic grain -- including emmer, spelt, kamut and einkorn -- were served as a green poultice on leaves of raw sorrel, topped with a saline black sauce of squid ink and seaweed oil. "This is healthy street food, not fried or fatty," he said.

Dave Chang, of Momofuku in New York, crossed the Atlantic to present sautéed glutinous rice balls, skewered and dipped in chili paste before being rolled in finely sliced nori. They looked like little hairy cartoon characters, and tasted wonderfully spicy and chewy.

Pasta or pizza?

The ever-inventive Davide Scabin, of Combal Zero in Turin, produced small plastic beakers containing warm tomato sauce, pasta and cheese. "Pour in a tiny capful of liquid buffalo mozzarella, cover tightly and shake," he instructed. "You'll have all the sensations and tastes of a classic Pizza Margherita!"

Aimo Moroni, of Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia restaurant, and one of Milan's gastronomic pioneers, was on hand, too. He stacked stone-fried pig's offal and veal with marinated Sardinian tomatoes on foccacia made from "burned" Arso wheat from Puglia. For more details on these and other dishes, look at the imaginative "menu" on the Le Fooding site. It's in Italian, but the drawings of each dish are delightful.

The Milanese diners were thrilled to meet the chefs and experience such diverse eating experiences on their home ground, and 40 percent of the night's takings went to a local charity for disadvantaged families.

Dining and dancing

Feast on the Bridge, held in September on Southwark Bridge in London, was an equally enjoyable, food-driven way to spend a day. Now in its fourth edition, the Feast is part of the Mayor's Thames Festival 2010. The sun shone on the large, central London bridge, devoid of cars and buses, and turned it into a giant foodie theme-park. The Feast is the brainchild of curator Clare Patey, an environmental artist and creator of the Ministry of Trying to Do Something About It, whose initiatives include producing ration books for reducing our consumption of natural resources.

"My work focuses on food and community, and Feast on the Bridge was conceived as a spectacular harvest supper that aims to reconnect urban people with the natural growing cycle," Patey says. "It's an invitation for Londoners to reclaim a public space in the heart of the city, to share a meal and a dance, and to learn about making, foraging for, growing and cooking food."

During the Feast, half of the bridge was occupied by an encampment of traditional and food-related artisans. Children could participate in each stage of bread-making, from threshing the wheat through stone-grinding the flour, to mixing and baking the dough. Further up the bridge, a group of traditional roof-thatchers from Rumpelstiltskin Thatching demonstrated another aspect of working with wheat.

Another Feast participant, A Taste of Freedom, raises awareness about food waste; their drive to reclaim good food being thrown away by supermarkets and markets produced a fruit salad big enough to feed everyone on the bridge that day. Chantal Coady, of Rococo Chocolates, gave chocolate-making lessons, while all along the bridge children were encouraged to decorate cookies, make corn dollies and play food-related games.

As for the eating, that was done at giant, 300-foot long tables along the bridge. Here everybody came together over impromptu meals assembled from the fabulous selection of food stalls gathered on Southwark Bridge Road, at the southern end of the bridge. Who could resist biodynamic beef burgers or Caribbean salads or handmade British cheeses from Neal's Yard? And where better to eat them than sitting at a table with friends, old and new, and a unique view over the Thames, its historic bridges, and the famous London skyline?

Carla Capalbo is an award-winning food, wine and travel writer based in Italy for more than 20 years. She writes regularly for magazines and newspapers, including Decanter, BBC Olive, The Independent, World of Fine Wine, Bon Appetit, Departures and Food & Wine and has a column on Italy's most popular wine site, winenews.it.

Top photo: Chef Davide Scabin of Turin's Combal Zero with his pasta in beakers. Credit: Carla Capalbo
All slideshow photos, credit: Carla Capalbo