Three Food Memories
The things you find out when you ask people about their food memories can be soulful, spicy, sensational, sour, and sublime. Often you'll discover something you never knew about the person you asked - and this is what the Three Food Memories podcast is about, how every food memory is linked to a moment in time.
Three Food Memories is hosted by Savva Savas, dad of twin boys, entrepreneur, caterer, and creator. In each episode Savva chats with a guest who shares three food memories and a social cause close to their heart, revealing far more about themselves than what they’ve tasted.
Be prepared for some hilarious and otherwise never-heard-before stories, and if you love listening - please tell your friends (and like, subscribe, and follow for all the goodness!)
Three Food Memories
🍸 Giorgio Bargiani (bite-sized)☕
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On mixologist Giorgio Bargiani's menu: grandfather's caffè corretto, dining out always in Pisa, and discovering spices in the UK.
If you liked this, don't miss the full episode out tomorrow - and be sure to tell your friends and share the love.
To find out more about the project and Savva - head to threefoodmemories.com
Insta - @savvasavas @threefoodmemories
Email us at threefoodmemories@plated.com.au, we'd love to hear from you!
TFM is produced and edited by Lauren McWhirter with original music by Russell Torrance.
Your first food memory: let's start there with the caffe coretto.
SPEAKER_00So, kaffe coretto is actually something that's not very popular outside of Italy and I guess it's getting even less popular in Italy. Growing up, grandfather, all man, men in general, they were drinking kaffe with a little licker or distillat. You know, it could be a kind of very entry level brandy. It could be an anisiliker, sambuka style. It could be sambucha itself. My grandfather was drinking, I don't know if it still exists an anisiliker called Sassolino, which means small rock. So I lived most of my life in my grandfather's house. And my grandfather used to drink his coffee in the living room straight after lunch. So leaving the dining room, the kitchen to move to the living room and have his coffee there. So I will bring him the coffee with Solino that my grandmother would make. He will drink it fairly fast, and I will straight away bring it back to my grandmother. The thing is, from the living room to the dining room, we will be, let's say, six, seven, eight meters with a blind corner. So I probably was not even five, and I don't know why, you know. Like my mom told me afterwards. I don't probably I I f I barely remember. I remember this action of going from a room to the other one. And in this blind spot, I will drink a little leftover that my grandfather will always leave behind in his cup.
SPEAKER_01Did he leave it behind for you?
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I think it I think it was an habit of him. He wouldn't finish.
SPEAKER_01What did it feel like as a five-year-old? Do you have any memory of the the the coretto going down?
SPEAKER_00It was that bittersweet feeling that you know when you're a kid you're not used to coffee, I think. But Sassolino, Sambuka, whatever, the very sweet and the very powerful flavor. So it was that kind of uh I can make it even if I don't like it, sort of.
SPEAKER_01Your second food memory is you spent most of your childhood and teenage years eating out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Like there is this mama and nonna thing that oh your mom cook. Your mum my mom wasn't really cooking. Uh, not because she can't, just because she was working until 1:32 in the afternoon every day. Uh so for context, I lost my father 30 years ago. So I was waiting for my mom to finish work while we were coming back, me and my brother from school. There is a pizzeria, a pizza place, called Il Montino, which two days ago I was there, which makes the best pizza and pizza by far. It's hard to describe, it's not Napolitan pizza, it's not Romana pizza. It's made in a pan. Uh it's a bit thick. El Montino was doing like I don't know, roast beef, lasagne, pasta, a lot of things. So every day we will have something different, but from El Montino, even there, either there or takeaway. So if we will eat there, we will be, of course, among people. If we will do takeaway, the place is packed every day. So we will go there and meet the butcher, the fisherman, the guy of the newspaper uh stand, you know, everybody will be there every day. Every day. While for dinner, I will go to my family restaurant just to see them. Not necessarily eating every single day there, but mostly, you know.
SPEAKER_01Now, this food memory, it's when you arrived in the UK from Pisa. The disappointment, the sadness, the shocking discovery of what people were eating in London.
SPEAKER_00I'm actually very grateful about this whole transition. You know, like grewing up, this restaurant always with seasonal product, local product, fresh product, you know, my standard was very high, you know, but not high in a fancy way. It's just, you know.
SPEAKER_01You had an understanding of what food was?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, and what it could be. Yeah, but we were all so living, I'm gonna say simpler time, but you know, like things that now are crazy expensive, say truffle. When I grew up, it was fairly affordable. So my family restaurant from October to December will have white ruffle, good white ruffle, for what would be, I don't know, spaghetti with ruffle would be 14 euros. For instance, or porcini mushroom, all these things, you know, they were very affordable. Anyway, I moved to not London on the first place, I moved to the Oxfordshire, working in a two Michelin star restaurant. There is called Emmanuel Catzuzon, beautiful place, a fairy tale. And the food was amazing. What was very shocking for me was coming across flavor I never experienced before. The UK cuisine is very influenced by most of other countries in the world, you know. Uh you have uh Asian flavor, you have African flavor, you have South American flavor, all probably historically due to uh colonies and trades and stuff, no? So I didn't grow up, for example, with a lot of usage of spices. In Italy we have chili and black peppercor. But you don't have, you know, cinnamon staranese, uh, uh curry, uh satchwin pepper, you know. The first encounter I had was in the canteen of this place I used to work. So generally, canteen food is not the most glamorous. Imagine you go to a canteen in a new country where you come across this very strong flavor. I was like, what is that? I can't eat anything. Even when they were doing pasta, for example, there will be something in the Bolognese sauce that I wouldn't recognize, that I wouldn't like, and so I wouldn't eat, you know. Or maybe the coriander, which is the worst enemy of Italians, you know, coriande leaf. Like I love it.
SPEAKER_01People in Korean, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's the turning point. That opened my eyes to the fact that Italian cuisine is amazing, Italian cuisine could be one of the best of the world. I agree. But somehow I was limited by those beautiful products I came across. I was very limited by those 30 dishes, 40 dishes, delicious, but always the same. So the discovery can be just summarizing. I arrive, I go to this canteen, I discover all these new flavors, I discover all these new dishes, and then move on. No, it was the beginning of a process. You know, from there I moved to London. London is London, it's not the Oxford Shire, you know. But London 12 years ago wasn't London of today. I think today London is one of the best city in the world by far to it.
