He made spontaneity and friendliness his strong point. Luca Pappagallo, from Grosseto, born in 1964, has only been working professionally in the kitchen for twenty years, but has managed to become one of the most followed professionals both on the web, where his videos are very popular, and on television, with his column on the channel Food Network, which is expressed through the various cookbooks he has published. And to present these he has also invented an original format in which, in the bookstore, while he explains his recipes, he cooks one live and then lets the audience taste it, as he recently did at the Promised from Villorba, in the Treviso area.
But who is Luca Pappagallo really?
I started 26 years ago, almost for fun, before I had another job, I I am a statisticianI was involved in social statistics and many other things. Then this cooking thing became more and more important and increasingly an awareness. In what I do there is never a search for the “I'll show you how good I am” or wanting to impress the audience, quite the opposite. What I show around is exactly that, that is, I don't make a film, I make a pasta dish that anyone can then make at home. I try to create a contact of genuineness with people.
So Luca Pappagallo is always the same, the normal evolution we all have, with a different awareness and with something I've realized goes the opposite way to what everyone else is going, that is, everyone is looking for likes, millions of views. I, on the other hand, got off that carousel and started to wander. I wander, really wander, think that since this latest book was born, we've already done over 80 events in a month and a half. But that's how it is, I have to do it, I mean, people need this. We're all here now. “detached”, curled up on your phone. But at a certain point, when you show people that something different exists—I won't say better, but different—they appreciate it. And for me, this contact is important, in fact, it's almost vital, because it made me understand so many things.
It all started with the internet…
The web is a great springboard for many and a great way to showcase things, but then you have to get moving and reach real people; nicknames aren't enough. That's what allows me to do this, in the sense of getting to know people, which is important, and then you say to yourself “I don't have a target”I'm followed by the young girl and the elderly lady, all very heterogeneous. It works in Friuli, it works in Veneto, it works in Sicily, wherever I go I go... it's exactly this. And I also receive conscious affection, in the sense that people often tell me “you keep me company”.
Where do you think the success of oriental cuisines among young people comes from?
Everyone, including today's kids, is subject to a lot of contamination, unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it, because that's exactly the change that's underway. The problem, however, is that it's also a sociological issue, that is. the family is no longer the same, But this change has been going on for many years. I've experienced it firsthand; I grew up with my grandmother. She was the center of the family. My children didn't have a grandmother, in the sense that grandmothers today work. What was once normal—passing down the family tradition, eating the things that were at home—is slowly disappearing. And these kids often find themselves looking at a recipe on TikTok and saying “Look, the Korean recipe is interesting” and they start cooking Korean. There's this gap, and it's a gap that tends to grow ever wider.
Then there are people like me, who in some way represent that type of generation, for whom I present recipes like today's, simple recipes, which are slowly fading away, and the success I still have is also to compensate for that type of world.
Can you give a definition of Italian cuisine?
Italian cuisine doesn't existThis is a statement that is not meant to be polemical, but -let's talk clearly- Authentic cuisine, Friulian cuisine, Calabrian cuisine, Sicilian cuisine, don't fit together at all; there isn't even the slightest similarity, neither in the ways of cooking nor in the way things are presented. There's a huge gap. We are within, it's true, an area where one can truly say the food is extraordinary. I believe there are few places in the world where I know I'll eat as well as in Piedmont, Puglia, Molise, etc. But there's no similarity, so we call Italian cuisine what is multitude of many traditional cuisines, which often aren't even regional. And then, within these, there are people who will tell you “no, the recipe is absolutely that one.” That's not true. Tortellini, for example—do you want to know how many tortellini recipes there are? It's part of our beauty, and we should be extremely proud of this enormous difference.
But paradoxically, the problem is: what is the true unity that exists in Italy? Sushi! You find so many and they're always full, and it's a big lie to say that only kids go there. So there's this huge cultural transformation underway. Ultimately, this sort of abandonment of traditional cuisine, "because it was no longer a thing”We did it ourselves. We also changed the entire social structure. It's not the kids' fault if they go out to eat Korean or Thai food, because today Korean is in fashion, but yesterday it was Japanese, tomorrow it will be something else.
Another “hot” topic is diets!
For example, in the recipes they offer me, they use the standard 80 grams of pasta, which implies a psychological issue; I tried it myself, and instead of 80 grams, I ended up using 85. It's actually quite strange. What I'm discovering is that these diets aren't just about losing weight, but also about doing it together, that is, translating what they do in such a way that everything becomes more palatable. Because the biggest problem for those who go on a diet is also knowing what to do, how to do it, because in the end, they're offering you, who knows, a piece of chicken five times a week!
How far can we push the trending organic research?
I think it's a wonderful thing if they are true organic, But how do you tell them apart? That's the problem: we don't know where they come from. Every now and then, you discover that organic isn't organic. Unfortunately, you have to trust, and sometimes that's extremely difficult.
Finally, we asked Luca Pappagallo to comment on the recognition of Italian cuisine as a world heritage site…
It's very interesting and fascinating that it has been recognized that within political borders there are so many traditional cuisines, so different from each other, but all brought together, and have even been valorized by UNESCO.
I am therefore happy to know that non-Italian cuisine has been so valued. Because it's also a question of culture, in the sense that the Italian cuisine abroad is not the same as the one in Italy, because in the end, many of our fellow countrymen who went abroad brought their traditions, which were then distorted. I believe that we, on the other hand, should be truly proud of the fact that we have so many different cuisines. There's a lot of difference, but in the end they're all wonderful., the Friulian dish, the Venetian dish, the Sicilian dish, etc.
