Manifesto

Italian food is often presented as a unified culinary system. In reality, this unity is a construction rather than a historical fact. What we call “Italian cuisine” is not a single canon, but a composite of regional, local, and situational practices that developed in parallel, shaped by biodiversity, geography, and social habits rather than by national standardization.

This plurality was not accidental. It emerged from structural conditions: exceptional ecological diversity, localized agricultural systems, and a long history of political and cultural fragmentation. For centuries, food in Italy evolved within relatively autonomous contexts, producing forms of cooking that were coherent locally but rarely interchangeable beyond their place of origin.

When Italian food began to circulate globally, it encountered a basic constraint: complexity does not travel easily. In order to become recognizable, reproducible, and commercially viable, it underwent processes of simplification and reduction. This transformation was not a betrayal of tradition, but an adaptation that allowed Italian food to succeed beyond its original contexts. The problem arises when this reduced version becomes the dominant reference, obscuring the logic and distinctions that once gave meaning to specific dishes and ingredients.

As a result, engaging more deeply with Italian food can appear to require expertise, mastery, or historical knowledge, turning complexity into a barrier rather than a resource. Con Gusto proposes a different approach. It does not aim to restore total complexity, reconstruct authenticity, or explain everything. It exists to make plurality livable: to render differences perceptible without demanding mastery, and to allow informed choices without flattening diversity.

Italian food does not need to be mastered. It needs to be inhabited. Con Gusto is an invitation to approach it in this way—quietly, precisely, and with pleasure.