Unexpected flavors from Italy – Promoting the culinary art of the Italian new generation
New York, Washington DC, Miami, Los Angeles, Montreal: after China, the 6th Edition of Hit week arrived to Canada and the United States, bringing to the new continent “the young face” of the Italian culture.
Hit Week is a project born 6 years ago, that combines music and food, two symbols of Italy, but very often stereotyped and stuck in images of the past, especially abroad. Is Italy a country for old men? Apparently not, and Hit Week wants to prove it, exporting all over the world the music and the food of the new generation.
Like music, even cuisine is always looking for something new, and finds it through the experimentation and the mixing of genres, through the combination of new flavors. The winner of the last Hit Week Chef Contest is Omar Di Santo, a young Italian who caught the attention of the jury with a delicious recipe, very representative of our peninsula: Tonnarelli with sepia and Rum.
Omar was at the IIC Los Angeles for the opening night of the Festival. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t make the same dish tonight,” Omar says. “Local ingredients are slightly different from those I use in Italy, and so I had to come out with something different. With the help of Pastina Trattoria, the local restaurant that is supporting us, I worked on a different recipe.”
Among the three variety of filled pasta they offered, the best was definitely the delicious saccottino ripieno al tartufo (truffle filled pasta). Omar is a professional chef and you can see that.
“I have two restaurants in Italy, so I know the job pretty well,” he says. “But I’m also considering new opportunities.” Omar in fact will be in New York for two weeks this November, for a business trip. Maybe, he’ll decide to bring the new Italian cuisine to the US East Coast…
Good Italian cuisine has to be accompanied by good wine, which in fact is also part of the festival. Adua Villa, famous Italian sommelier, tells us that since the beginning, together with Hit Week Producer Francesco Del Maro, she decided to make the promotion of the best Italian wine part of this adventure.
Even this year, they worked to combine music with this other face of the Italian culture, by bringing abroad some of the most renowned names of the Italian wine industry. The intention is always to dedicate more and more attention to the culinary art, which today, more than ever, is considered in all respects a form of art.
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