Slow Food Salone

Think of your favourite culinary collective; Saturdays Temple Bar Market? The St George's Saturday Market in Belfast? The Galway Saturday Market? Whatever you fancy, but now try this: multiply that collection of talented food producers by, oh, 5,000-fold. Scale up that collection of artisans until they fill 5 Point Theatres to bursting point. Imagine the pitch of Croke Park packed with great foods and great food people. Got it? Got that massive, ginormous concept in your head? Well, then you are close to imagining what happens when Slow Food runs its bi-annual Salone del Gusto in Turin.

Artisans from all over the world, thousands of them. An audience touring the massive halls of Turin's Lingotto that can reach almost 100,000 people in a single day. And foods the like of which you can't believe: aubergines that look like tomatoes. Black beans from the Basque country like you have never seen. Wild smoked Atlantic salmon from Ireland alongside artisan beers from the United States. Nut oils from Africa. Sarawak peppercorns. Every manner of cured meat from every corner of Italy you could conceive of.

On and on it goes. And there is Alice Waters, doyenne of American cooking, a woman who looks like your Mum, talks to an audience as if she as sitting around a fire with them sharing a drink, and a woman whose charisma has to be felt to be believed. And there is Carlo Petrini, trademark scarf whirling as he skitters from meeting to meeting, from press conference to press conference to Presidia meeting, the man who began it all. And there are the television crews, and the local politicians, and the international brigades reporting on the biggest food show in the world.

You know the way people of the Muslim faith plan a trip to Mecca, as an essential pat of their faith? Well, as far as we can see, every food lover should plan a visit to the Slow Food Salone as an essential part of their education. There is nothing like it, and trying to describe it is almost futile, because you have to feel that sense of energy, that sense of global community, you have to taste and try and talk to them, to really appreciate just how important Slow Food actually is.

The star of the latest Salone was the various presidia of local food producers from throughout the world, including the presidia of salmon smokers from Ireland: Peter Dunn of Dunn's Seafood in Dublin, Frank Hederman of Cobh, Antony Creswell of Ummera in West Cork and Sally Barnes of Woodcock Smokery in Castletownshend. The Irish presidia presented their protocol on Irish smoked wild Atlantic salmon via Mark Boyden of Streamscapes, and the aim of this and all the various presidia all around the world is simply to assist, support and promote these vital products, many of them foods that are under threat for many reasons, from environmental depredation to the bullying hand of government.

And for many of the artisans, one of the great benefit of the Salone is simply to realise just how many people there are who work in exactly the same way they do, from all over the world: the inspiration comes from the realisation that they are not alone.

And, to bring it all home, Ireland's Kevin Thornton cooked a dinner, sponsored by An Bord Bia, in the magnificent cellars of the Enotecco Contratto, and knocked everyone dead with some of his great signature dishes: terrine of bacon and cabbage with leek purée; loin of sikka deer with suckling pig trotter in poitin sauce; and apple tartlet with Midleton ice cream were just a few of the dishes that had the Italians in seventh heaven.

So, get switched on to Slow Food today, for Slow is the way to go! www.slowfoodireland.com

Galleria di Salone

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