RIO DE JANERIO, Brazil — While 53-year-old Italian chef Massimo Bottura is known for his restaurant, Osteria Francescana, which was rated best in the world by Restaurant magazine, he is also committed to feeding the less fortunate in Brazil. Restaurant-goers make reservations months in advance and pay hundreds of euros at Osteria Francescana, in a country where more than 3.4 million people live in a state of food insecurity. In light of this, Bottura opened a restaurant in Rio de Janeiro where his customers will eat for free.
In 2015, Bottura created a progressive exhibition of sustainable cooking at the Expo Milano: He transformed an abandoned theater in a forlorn suburb into a soup kitchen that educated and fed refugees and homeless people using more than 15 tons of salvaged food. The food came from the exposition’s pavilions and was turned into more than 10,000 meals for those less fortunate in Brazil.
Bottura joined a Brazilian non-profit organization, Gastromotiva, which was founded in 2004 by chef David Hertz to promote social change through gastronomy. The organization aims to reach young people from low-income and immigrant families and hopes to create a social movement while filling a labor gap in Brazil’s community. Hertz and Bottura partnered to create a community kitchen model restaurant called Refettorio Gastromotiva, which opened its doors on August 9, 2016 at the start of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Corporate sponsors funded the 108-seat restaurant and customers were chosen by charities working in Rio’s poorest neighborhoods. Bottura’s ingredients were garbage-bound food along with food donated by the catering companies at the Olympic park and athlete villages.
A team of celebrity chefs worked with Bottura to make around 5,000 meals for some of the most vulnerable, less fortunate in Brazil, plagued by poverty and inequality. All of the meals had three courses: antipasto or pasta, a main course and dessert.
Rio City Hall has granted Bottura and Hertz the site free of charge for 10 years. After the Olympics, the food will now come from various sources, including local distributors that save edible fruits and vegetables from markets and grocery stores that would have otherwise been thrown away. Refettorio Gastromotiva will operate as a culinary institute as well as a restaurant.
Patrons that pay to eat at the restaurant will, as a result, be donating meals to the less fortunate in Brazil. Refettorio’s concept is “buy lunch, give dinner,” where clients who eat lunch there will be contributing toward a dinner for someone living in poverty.
The Refettorio Gastromotiva will also be a center for projects related to food and social inclusion. It will offer workshops on healthy nutrition and food waste reduction for families, cooks and school managers.
– Jacqueline Venuti
Photo: Flickr