The Challenge of Creating American Food and Culture in Milan
Have you heard the one about the American who travels to Italy looking for barbeque?
The World Expo (a.k.a. World’s Fair) is happening now through October 31 in Milan. It’s the first in Expo’s more than 200-year history to focus on food and culture, and examines our modern problem of feeding a population growing to 9 billion people by 2050. One hundred and forty-five countries have spaces in pavilions about 45 minutes outside of the city, built in styles specific to each country—Japan’s façade is interlocking wooden blocks, the United Arab Emirates’ pavilion was designed to evoke desert sands.
The James Beard Foundation, America’s premiere food education organization, helped the U.S. conceptualize its presence at Expo and created more than just the expected pavilion featuring American food. The Beard Foundation boldly declares American food worthy of showcasing beyond just the Expo grounds, by creating a six-month pop up restaurant in the heart of the city of Milan, right next to some of Italy’s best restaurants.
Come to Italy, the restaurant beckons, to taste America.
The James Beard American Restaurant at Seven Stars Galleria brings some of the U.S.’s best chefs to cook American food in Milan. The Beard Foundation cleverly perched the restaurant on the top-floor penthouse suite of the Seven Stars Galleria Hotel in Milan, a spectacular entertaining space with views of the newly renovated Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. (Stay in one of the hotel’s rooms and your bed is steps away from dinner.)
But the penthouse space is so in-demand in Milan, that the restaurant must move in and out of the space as needed. According to one person I spoke with while dining at the restaurant recently, a Dubai prince left just several hours before the restaurant welcomed scores of diners.
The restaurant features an ever-changing list of guest chefs cooking in the chef’s particular American style, each of whom cooks for two evenings only. Last week, chef and “Father of Southwestern Cuisine” Dean Fearing cooked favorite dishes from his eponymous restaurant in Dallas, Texas; for the next three months you can eat directly from the hands of Tom Colicchio and Ming Tsai, among others.
The draw is not only knowing that the master chefs will touch every dish you eat—an unusual experience, given that Colicchio (for example) has a half-dozen restaurants with more opening this year, a line of sandwich shops, a food-policy group, and Top Chef tapings taking up his time. Ticket sales are limited so diners have one-on-one conversations with the chef on multiple occasions throughout the evening during the cocktail hour and the meal. As with all pop-up restaurants, despite its success, the James Beard American Restaurant has a set date when it will serve its last meal.
As is the trend in fine dining, the dinner is a ticketed, non-refundable event with a fixed menu. When I was there, Fearing cooked a meal the likes of which Milan has probably never seen. For one thing, several ingredients were not available in Italy.
“I couldn’t find tortillas, and those are important in southwest cooking,” Fearing told me in a conversation with other guests before dinner. “I looked everywhere and finally found a guy about 45 minutes out of the city who would make them for me.” The tortillas were critical for Fearing’s barbequed shrimp taco with mango/pickled red onion salad and smoky citrus vinaigrette, and his spicy tortilla soup with tomato broth.
European Union import laws prohibit Fearing—and the thousands of other chefs from all over the globe—from bringing in many of his country-specific ingredients, “We couldn’t ship anything over, so it was a really busy prep week,” said Fearing. “I was getting a little worried for a minute there.”
While many countries involved in Expo had to get special waivers, the Beard restaurant presents an even more difficult challenge for the Americans because every chef who visits crafts a new menu (fried chicken for Art Smith, salmon for Maria Hines) needing new ingredients.
Take Jack cheese. It’s a semi-soft, medium-to-bold flavored cheese that no one—no one—makes in Italy. “So everyone was looking for a similar cheese to put in our tacos,” Fearing says. “Eventually, we discovered Provolone—not the aged kind. And everyone loved it so much, I plan on putting a touch on our tacos at the restaurant in Texas.” Fearing’s menu also featured chicken-fried quail and a Vermont maple syrup-soaked beef tenderloin (I didn’t dare ask how the maple syrup, a distinctly North American product, was procured.)
Dinner at the restaurant provokes many questions, ones that generally surround Expo: What is our national food culture in a time of global citizenship? How can countries serve authentic cuisine within current import laws, and how can chefs ensure those ingredients arrive as fresh as possible? There’s no day-old sushi bin at the Japanese Pavilion.
More on all that in a few days, but for now, a visit to the American Restaurant should be on any Milan itinerary. I’ve heard the one about the American who eats barbeque in Italy, and the story ends happily.
Fixed five-course menu with wine pairings for 120 euro, including tax and tip.
