There are no snails and last year's presences are all confirmed: the Guida delle Osteria d'Italia – Slow Food's subsidiary of Italian eating, arrives in bookstores with a supportive choice towards basic Italian catering. Times are tough, and already maintaining businesses severely penalized by government measures to contain the pandemic is an act of courage and at the same time a strong testimony of resilience, a commitment to positivity on the part of hosts, restaurateurs, from all over the world. world that revolves around taverns, for the recovery of Italy.
For this reason, the editors of the Guide have decided not to award awards this year and at the same time to maintain in the publication all the taverns mentioned in last year's edition, without eliminating any of them to make room for the new entries which this year are 119.
Overall, in the 2021 edition, the two hundred collaborators of the Guida delle Osterie d'Italia reviewed a total of 1.697 establishments, including the specific catering realities of each region such as pizzerias in Campania, stoves in Puglia and piadinerias in Emilia-Romagna with two additional very useful recommendations, especially for travellers, are the taverns near the railway stations and those near the motorway exits.
The region with the most reports is Campania, followed by Tuscany, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto. Soon after Puglia and Sicily arrive, testifying that that of taverns is more than ever an identity linked to the whole Italian territory and not specific to some areas.
«We have reflected for a long time on the possibility of going out or not in such a year - write the curators Marco Bolasco and Eugenio Signoroni, then we realized that these pages are an important testimony of a piece of the country, they represent a community made up of hosts , of territories and of passionate patrons who live the taverns. The small large local economies, made up of family management, agricultural businesses, virtuous networks, have been able to resist and transform themselves from small and appear large to those who do not yet know them»
In fact, in a period in which many sacrifices have been made, the world of taverns and trattorias has held and proved to occupy a particularly important place in the scale of values of most Italians. And in the months between the two lockdowns, many recorded a record attendance above all thanks to the possibility of old or new dehors.
To retrace the history of excellence at the end of the Guide there is a complete list of all the taverns that have been awarded the Snail from the first edition to today, to trace an overview of the evolution of excellent catering, as evidenced by the presence of some realities that constitute absolute reference points on the national and international scene.
The release of Osterie d'Italia 2021 is accompanied by two important actions in support of the taverns. The first is a section on the Slow Food Editore blog, which is continuously updated, which communicates the activities undertaken by the innkeepers to make up for the various closure measures and hourly restrictions to which restaurant activities are subject in this delicate historical period.
The second is a digital forum, scheduled for Monday 23 November, which will constitute a real moment of confrontation between the Guide and the taverns to understand the needs, the difficulties but also the projects for the post-pandemic and the opportunities resulting from the ingenuity that had to be resorted to from March to today. More than a point of the situation, the forum will be an opportunity to think proactively about the present but also about the future.
