Pto convince UNESCO that our dishes deserved to be considered a World Heritage Site, Italian Cuisine, Casa Artusi and the Italian Academy of Cuisine came up with the idea of organize Sunday lunch in the squares of hundreds of Italian cities and villages: long convivial tables, crowded and applauded. In the end, a successful binge.
It is true that the initiative (last September 21st) found the support of the ministries of Culture, Agriculture and the National Association of Italian Municipalities, in short, a powerful shock wave. The coveted recognition arrived three months later, who knows if the credit goes to this tasty event or not. The more interesting it is to understand why Sunday lunch was chosen to convince the last undecideds of UNESCO.
Laura Arosio, sociologist, recalls the stereotypes on the subject, starting from our own films, with the family gathered around the table: «In international eyes, Italy, together with Spain, Greece, Portugal, has the family at its centre. Lunch eaten together is part of the narrative. It is a reassuring image, especially with the war scenarios around it. It responds to our need for ritual, to feel like we belong to a group, to recognize ourselves. But be careful: the family has changed, it has become smaller, fewer children and a third of Italians live alone.”
Sunday lunch, a fixed point that shelters from uncertainty
A collective Sunday table set on the Terrazza Mascagni, in Livorno.
However, the eating event is back in this Italy which increasingly resembles a hive of solitude, scheduled for Sunday or Saturday: an appointment safe from ugliness, from future anxieties and uncertainties. For several decades, Mauro Jannelli had a fixed point in his life as president and CEO of the design studio Jannelli & Volpi: on Saturday, at his parents’ house, with his sisters, their children and husbands, him with his two children and his wife. He says: «There were 12-15 of us each time, there was no obligation, you could go or not, the kids arrived after school, the times were different… The strength was precisely in the elasticity, in the absolute freedom to participate or do anything else. We saw each other, the cousins spent some time together, we told each other about the past week and the week to come. My parents were the driving force, especially my mom. Today we miss that appointment, yes we miss it: we try to do it again, taking turns to prepare, because it was nice to meet again.”
Beautiful, and today almost indispensable, especially for the new generations. This is what Alessandro Rosina, professor of Demography and Social Statistics at the Catholic University of Milan, experiences first-hand: «From the data we have, it emerges that relationships are increasingly important for young people. Let me explain: they want to live and work in contexts in which they feel good, on an emotional and psychological level. And the family, despite the tensions, remains their most important refuge, where they seek, and often find, support.” With a corollary: “Compared to their peers in other countries, our young people are less supported and appreciated by the State. They receive welfare and effective help from their families of origin. Sitting together around the table means reaffirming the bond, helping each other, reducing the frenzy of live.” Finding foods eaten by children, chatting, relaxing. Madeleine effect, also known as Proust syndrome: flavors capable of recalling childhood memories. Whether at home or in a restaurant, the spring remains. And if lasagna and cannelloni are a bit demonized because they are anti-diet, we are looking for enjoyable alternatives. Of ethnic cuisine, fusion or star chefs. Like Claudio Sadler (one Michelin star), who at his Milanese restaurant at the Hotel Casa Baglioni, offers the Sunday menu. He says: «A four-course lunch for the price of 70 euros. Families also come with children, we always have reservations. It’s the desire to be together, relaxed, served and eating traditional, quality dishes.”
Goodbye brunch
After having exploded and become fashionable, brunch has been struggling lately. Guilt of having distorted the original American formula with cup of coffee, eggs, bacon, bagels, yogurt, orange juice, pancakes, maple syrup. At today’s brunches you can find everything from fried foods to couscous, and the prices aren’t even cheap. You fill your plate, mix flavours, go out of your diet without the benefit of feeling “cool”, given that brunch is no longer trendy. Better to make up for Saturday/Sunday lunch, no matter if with the traditional family like Ettore Scola, or extended with friends and new companions like Ferzan Ozpetek. The important thing is to restore the ritual of banquet together. «Scholars question this need for rituality. Once upon a time, there were fixed stages, baptisms, confirmations, weddings… Today we celebrate micro-milestones: graduation, driving licence, a new house, a race. No longer collective but individual stages” recalls Laura Arosio. Therefore, it is not true that the sunset of Sunday lunch meant the sunset of the family, as some claimed years ago. «I wouldn’t talk about the disintegration of the family, we are witnessing a change of pace, an evolution. The sense of belonging was rediscovered.”
Fast food and takeaways on weekdays
Lunch on Saturday or Sunday has another, less obvious advantage: it is eaten during the day. Italians, in fact, seem to like going out in the evening less and less, either to avoid culinary and alcoholic revelry before going to sleep, or for the sake of narrating the possible dangers. The Italian Academy of Cuisine has certified that, on holidays, 52 percent of Italian families opt for menus with a history inside, regional, village ones, handed down from grandmothers, great-grandmothers and to be enjoyed preferably at home. It produced 1,834 questionnaires to probe our relationship with culinary tradition. Sunday is the center of the research, but it is easy to understand that the data collected is applicable to Saturday, Easter, Christmas. On weekdays we are ready to consume take-away food, fast food, ready or frozen meals, partly out of laziness, partly due to time constraints, while on the weekend we “claim” made in Italy foods: in fact, 82 percent of those interviewed admitted this. Scratch, scratch, that is, we are a population of hardened traditionalists, skilled in making eating well coincide with the value of family (63 percent). And enjoying an emotional leap, for the madeleine effect. © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
