Happy BD Casa Jasmina!

Turin and its residents have always had a creative mind and a very active life so it doesn't come as a surprise that next week even Cap. Samantha Cristoforetti and MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli (curious octopus) will be in town :D

These two amazing women will come to Turin to take part to the 11th edition of the Share Festival - the Italian electronic art fair, a cross-disciplinary platform to promote contemporary art and culture in all its creative forms.

Share Festival is organized by world renown sci-fi author and big Turin Epicurean Capital fan Bruce Sterling, his multi-talented intellectual activist wife: Jasmina Tesanovic and Chiara Garibaldi.

Piedmont chocolate world wide

We always take pride in our chocolate but today, we want to show you where you can actually savor a piece of Piedmont chocolate everywhere you'll go in the world!

Many famous Italian brands are from our region however, Ferrero is truly the most cherished one <3 Why? Because of the products that made it famous in so many countries!

Ferrero (currently the 3rd largest confectionery company in the world!) was born as a family company in 1946 in Alba - the white truffle hub and since then, it has expanded and it has strived to create high quality industrial products. 

Mr Michele Ferrero always launched new products after long research months and trials; he was a high achiever and aimed to the best combination of flavor, texture and consumer's reward feeling. He used to say that "the average housekeeper should feel like an aristocrat when savoring a Ferrero chocolate". Who doesn't feel like that when unwrapping a golden Ferrero Rocher?

Over the years the company has conquered the world market and different niches for different products from Nutella to TicTac.

a day at Norman's

Turin is the Italian city with more restaurants and coffee shops, so picking a good one isn't too hard. 

Among the coffee shops that marked the city's history, there is Bar Norman near Piazza Solferino, in Via Pietro Micca 22.

This is the iconic coffee shop where the Torino Football Club was founded, making it a must-visit coffee shop for all Italian soccer fans!
Bar Norman was founded in 1918 and, even if the management has changed over the years, and it has been recently restored, you can still see some signs of its glorious past.

Alessi = Piedmont design

staple Alessi metal design items

Turin and Piedmont are indeed the Italian design center and "our" Alessi is one of the most renowned Italian brands in the world! In fact, together with the Bialetti moka - another famous Italian symbol ;) - it is one of the highest examples of Italian design.

Turin Chefs' Association

As the very first Italian capital, Turin also boasts the very first Italian association of chefs, cooks and kitchen professionals, from the HTM/cooking students to the restaurant owners. Founded in 1722, Associazone Cuochi Torino (ACT) is even older than the national Italian Cooks Federation (F.I.C.) (Italy got united into a whole kingdom in 1861) and back then, it already included women!
In the past centuries, wealthy families, especially the aristocrats, used to hire their own chefs/cooks and dine in their palazzos while restaurants, as we know them today, were not fashionable yet and cooking was a different profession.

Darryl's perspective on wines

This week guest post is by Darryl Baldwin who was a guest at Turin Epicurean Capital 2014.

After working in the City of London for 40 years trading, selling and marketing the whole gamut of financial instruments for various international banks, he and his wife stumbled across a piece of Paradise. It was February 2007 and he had decided the time was right for a bit of permanent R&R. Within a few months they had bought a house in Neive and properly discovered Nebbiolo. They built a grandchildren attractor (swimming pool) and within 2 years, when it was a proven success, decided to sell the house in the UK, help the kids and settle permanently in Italy. They have never looked back and are in love with the wine, the food, the culture and the family-centric approach to life. Slowly but surely they  are educating their English friends that they live in Piemonte where the best wines in Italy (if not the world) are made and not in Tuscany which is the only region they appear to know. You can follow Darryl on his blog Piemonte mio

Bookshops in Turin

Even in the digital era, Turin still has many independent bookshops and despite great online stores and e-book readers, many Italians are still buying real paper books. 

Although at Turin Epicurean Capital we are all addicted to buying books (especially food, novels and art), this week we thought of showing you some of those bookshops we MUST visit time to time, naturally without any cash or credit card on us. Most of our favorite bookshops have books in Italian and also other languages, so non-Italian speakers will enjoy these bookshops too ;)