Massimo Bottura explores turning food waste into gourmet meals for refugees, homeless
Updated
One of the world's best chefs, Massimo Bottura, is leading a social gastronomy movement aimed at reducing global food waste while also helping feed Michelin-star meals to refugees and homeless.
Bottura is an Italian restaurateur and the chef patron of Osteria Francescana, a three-Michelin-star restaurant based in Modena Italy and currently ranked number one in the world.
But it has been his involvement in the movement known as social gastronomy that is the focus of a new documentary, Theater for Life.
It has been promoted as a moving documentary that "will feed your spirit and your appetite".
The documentary tells the story of the Refettorio Ambrosiano, a soup kitchen set up by Bottura with 60 internationally renowned chefs.
With the help of top designers, they converted an old theatre into a fine dining restaurant and fed refugees and homeless people in Milan.
All the dishes were made with food that would have otherwise been thrown out.
"Stale bread from the day before can become gold to so many people," said Bottura.
Around one third of the food produced in the world is estimated to be wasted every year — working out to be around 1.3 billion tonnes of food.
Food prepared 'as though for a three-star restaurant'
Joanna Savill, an Australian food writer and friend of Bottura, worked alongside the team of international chefs during filming.
"I was peeling potatoes, kilos of them, for a Japanese chef Yoshihiro Narisawa, whose restaurant is in the top 10 in the world," she said.
"And every single piece of that potato had to be cut into a precise size, even though it was going to be blended, because he wanted it to be perfect."
Ms Savill said the team of designers, artists and architects turned the location into an "absolutely beautiful space".
"Everything was beautifully prepared and served as if it would have been in one of their three-star restaurants," she said.
Among the chefs involved in the project was Rene Redzepi, who runs the two-Michelin-star restaurant Noma in Copenhagen.
He contributed food to the soup kitchen, but said Bottura's idea was a much bigger project.
"To donate a cake once a month to a soup kitchen, so everybody gets a taste of something sweet is simple, any restaurant can do that," he said.
"Maybe it's because my father came as an immigrant with nothing … that I've always been drawn to these things and think it's natural to do it."
The film is being screened as part of a crowdfunding venture by OzHarvest, an organisation working to eliminate food waste.
'Hopefully it will encourage everyone to reduce waste'
Ms Saville, an OzHarvest ambassador, said 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted every year.
In Australia that number is about 4 million tonnes, which is about $8-10 billion worth of food.
Every ticket sold in Australia will contribute 14 meals to those who need it.
Ms Saville said she was hoping it would encourage households to reduce their food waste.
"Think about what you're buying, think about how you're using it and actually loving your leftovers," she said.
"And understanding that things that don't look so fabulous can actually turn into something delicious."
Theater of Life will begin screening nationally on Monday November 14.
Photo:
A bowl of pasta served at the Refettorio Ambrosiano project kitchen. (Supplied: Paolo Saglia)
Topics: food-and-beverage, refugees, food-and-cooking, community-and-society, homelessness, australia
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