• “The carbonara case” arrives at Syracuse University Florence
On 18 March 2025, I will lecture on a research strand that has engaged me considerably during 2023-2024: the Carbonara case. I will do so at the invitation of Syracuse University Florence, one of the most prestigious universities in the United States (#73) and particularly renowned for its study abroad programs (#8), and Kyle Griffith. How did the idea of this research come about?
There are some anecdotes worth remembering. On 22 March 2023, I was in Brussels for an EIT Food meeting dedicated to the establishment of an Observatory on the Future of Food, and suddenly I found myself bombarded with questions: Did I know an Italian professor from Parma who declared to FT that Italian cuisine is the product of invention and that carbonara was an American recipe? I knew him! I had read his first bestseller “Denominazione di origine inventata”, it was Alberto Grandi, whom I also got to know personally sometime later. Then, on July 1st, I received an exclusive invitation to participate in a special tasting at the University of Italian Cuisine, dedicated to carbonara in its 1954 version, the first recipe for this dish to be published in the magazine “La Cucina Italiana”, two years after its appearance in a guide to restaurants on the North Side of Chicago (in the review of Armando’s restaurant, owner of Tuscan origins if I’m not mistaken). Our guide in this time travel? Luca Cesari, a quoted gastronomy historian. The ingredients? Spaghetti, eggs, bacon, gruyere, and garlic. Unbelievable, eh? The discussions about paternity and the ingredients included in the canon were raging.
A month later, an English friend invited me to do research on this subject as a challenge. As if a strategic consultant could not dispel the mystery behind the success of this dish so iconic food made in Italy. This was the start of a passionate study, based on the transdisciplinary method that I use for strategic analysis of complex problems, which evolved into a peer-reviewed article presented at the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium on 29 May 2024. What question did I answer? Only to the question “Why does carbonara-making generate so much controversy?” Yet the answer takes us right under the surface of the iceberg, until we discover the secret of a megafood, a recipe that is worth more than 1 billion dollars at the international level, just to add up the value of the ingredients. The results of the research were so striking that they were quoted in both La Repubblica and La Stampa on 3 June. The article is now the most downloaded on the Dublin 2024 conference website (275 times). Is it over here? No, because this case has much to say both to those who study food and to those who want to apply the transdisciplinary method to strategic issues, as well as to companies interested in selling their products as complex food ingredients. More presentations are coming, stay tuned (and contact me if you have any special needs)!
Here is the link to my article (open source): The Carbonara Case