Street Food at Salone del Gusto

Written by

Salone del Gusto 2010From our friend currently in Turin at the Slowfood Salon of Taste, writer
Elizabeth Minchilli:

Even though I’ve been coming to the Salone  del Gusto since its first edition 16 years ago (with Evan), I haven’t been in the last six years. The Salone takes place every two years in Turin, and every  year that I went it seemed to be bigger and bigger, and that still holds true. But it also gets better and better.

The main part of the Salone is taken up by a huge mercato, with thousands of vendors from all over Italy and the world. There is also an entire section of workshops and lectures, an enoteca and many bookstores. This year there are two new sections that are dear to my heart: Street Food and Cocktails. I knew I’d want to spend serious time in both of these areas.

Since it was only 11am, my friend Sienna and I decided to spend a quick half hour yesterday at Street Food, making the rounds of as many of the stands as possible. (Even I draw the line at cocktails at 11am. I’ll save that for tomorrow) Eating food in the street, the moment it is prepared is something that happens all over the world. Here at the Salone they’ve gathered quite a few vendors, mostly Italian, but also from places like China and Kurdistan.

Each of the dozen stands were offering good sized portions of food, at extremely reasonable prices. So…we wanted to try as many as possible. But of course there was no way we could finish each portion. And remember, the Salone is all about sustainability, so we also didn’t feel right taking a bit and then throwing it away.  So, what did we do? We just walked up to strangers and started sharing. And trading.  We thought people would look at us strangely. “Want this last oliva ascolana? I’m not going to eat it?” Would you eat food offered by a stranger? Well, everyone we asked did. And then handed over their bits of uneaten snacks. Fried dough stuffed with gorgonzola? A bit of apple-stuffed pastry? We tried them all. And made lots of new friends too.

The collage of food is starting at the upper left and going clockwise:
Farinata from La Spezia,  Bombette from Puglia, Fresh Fried Anchovies from Sicily, Olive all’Ascolana, Foccacia Di Recco