The agrichef Fabrizio Murrocu with the "Sa Mandra" agritourism in Alghero won the award of best restaurant in the mid-range price category. Local products grown on the farm and traditional flavors are the recipe most awarded by the reviews
The farmer-cook, Fabrizio Murrocu, owner of the "Sa Mandra" farmhouse in Alghero, in Sardinia, won the award for best restaurant assigned by Tripadvisor, the most important travel site on the web which has an average of 29 million accesses every month.
The news was relaunched by Coldiretti after the choice of the popular portal to reward the Sardinian agritourism as the best restaurant in the category with medium-range prices. The ranking of winners was compiled using an algorithm that took into account the quantity and quality of Tripadvisor reviews over a 12-month period.
The recognition represents for the agrichefs – this is how agricultural entrepreneurs who open the doors of their farms to also focus on catering have now been renamed – a symbolic first step in the variegated and sophisticated world of awards that animate and often agitate the upper floors of the planet inhabited by stellar and highly decorated chefs.
The flavors of tradition, local and seasonal products, typical recipes and cooking methods are obviously the basis of the rich menu offered to guests of Sa Mandra, which welcomes its guests in an equipped outdoor space or in an original restaurant room with wooden canopies, light tablecloths and straw chairs. Special menus are designed for celiacs and other food intolerances, with attention also to the needs of vegetarians.
“The Tripadvisor award shows how the link with the territory in the choice of ingredients to be used in the kitchen has become a key element of success for catering, with the agritourism being the forerunner of a real cultural revolution in the sector” commented Diego Scaramuzza, national president of Terranostra, the agritourism association of Campagna Friend, in underlining that “it is no coincidence that Sa Mandra was chosen to host the first training course for country cooks from Campagna Amica on the Island”.
The recognition is the confirmation – adds the farmers' organization – of the great success of the agrichef phenomenon, the peasant cooks of Campagna Amica who cook the agricultural products they cultivate by recovering the ancient traditional recipes. A flagship of a sector, the agritourism sector, which today has 23.4000 structures in Italy - concludes Coldiretti - which are able to offer a potential of more than 253 beds and over 441 seats for refreshments.
A strong push for the expansion of agri-catering came from” agriculture orientation law which introduced, a couple of decades ago, the so-called "connected activities". In practice, farmers are recognized, within certain parameters and production limits, to combine the main agricultural activity (cultivating the fields and raising livestock), with the possibility of transforming part of the materials produced into ingredients for cooking and serving meals in farm premises.
A change of pace which, in addition to the combination of agritourism and catering, has expanded the perimeter of the primary agricultural activity to many other agri-food sectors linked to the raw materials produced on the farm, such as beer using barley grown in the field, bread and pasta with flour from one's own sack.
A concept of diversification that has ratified the entry of farmers into the service sector as well, such as allocating a part of farm buildings to social activities such as agri-kindergartens and educational farms in the innermost rural areas.
What emerges from these experiences is the affirmation of a more modern and also more profitable model of agriculture, which young people are looking at with growing interest. A necessary push to accelerate the generational turnover that Italian agriculture has a great need of, much more than many European partners.
Of course you work more, it's a bit like working two jobs, but the possibility of transforming all or part of your crops into a business allows, thanks also to a facilitated tax regime, to increase the added value produced in the company and free yourself from volatility of commodity markets agricultural which historically relegates the agricultural component to the lowest part of the value distribution chain along the supply chain.
