I'll admit it. I needed to take a break after the Pizza World Championship in Parma, because the ‘Championship’ – as we affectionately call it – is a mix of conflicting emotions: the hap-piness of those who return every year, the tension of those arriving for the first time, the joy of the winners, and the disappointment of those who expected more – all of these stick with us. And so, once the ovens have been switched off, it’s time to pause and reflect. In this month’s issue of Pepita – Pizza e Pasta Italiana, we begin to tell the stories of the winners who will accompany us until summer, but as happens every year, we’ve gathered many testimonials, because those who put themselves out there have already won.
But what makes the difference between those who climb to the top step of the podium in a competition or ranking and those who do not? It is a ques-tion that you, professional pizza makers, ask yourselves (and ask us) every day, sometimes lucidly, other times with anger, seeking more or less valid reasons. This is what we wanted to discuss, at a meeting organised in collaboration with “Le 5 Stagioni” on the final day of the Championship, with some of the biggest names in the Italian gastronomic communications scene: Luigi Cremona, Nerina Di Nunzio, Giusy Ferraina, Elis Rubino, Lorenza Vitali. Let me say that it was one of the most enlightening events we have ever experienced. Of course, the seats were all taken, but there wasn’t a huge crowd asking questions, listening, or challeng-ing (and being challenged by) ideas: could it be that we don’t really want to know the answer, but prefer to bask in our own convictions?

I’ll close this editorial with another question: what is the role of a trade fair in times of global crisis? For some time now, I’ve thought that major events create a ‘suspension of reality’, not for those who organise them but for those who experi-ence them, turning people into hamsters running on the wheel of their own cage and making those days a parenthesis we’d like to forget once we’re back home. So, I invite you to read the interview with which we open this issue: the protago-nist is Riccardo Caravita, Cibus and Food Brand Manager at Fiere di Parma, who talks about Tuttofood, the first major global event that Italy is hosting during this period of (new) international crisis. Caravita hopes that the role of a trade fair will become that of “helping to interpret the present”. And we are on his side.

 

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