I loved this quote from the American novelist Wendell Berry: eating is an agricultural act. He meant it literally — and the longer one stays in this work, the more literal it becomes.
I loved this quote from the American novelist Wendell Berry, since I ran into his essay The Pleasures of Eating: eating is an agricultural act. He meant it literally, of course, but the longer one stays in this work, the more literal it becomes.
We tend to think of eating as the moment a plate arrives at the table. But the plate has been on its journey for months — the seed, the soil, the weather of a particular June, the patience of the producer, the milling temperature, the choices of a buyer somewhere in a port city, the morning rush of a kitchen, the few seconds of attention before the first bite. To eat is to consent to all of it.
Berry wrote that consenting carefully — with curiosity, with knowledge — is itself a quiet political act. I would put it more humbly: it is a hospitable one. We are guests of the field every time we sit down to a meal we did not grow ourselves. Hospitality begins long before the host arrives.
We are guests of the field every time we sit down to a meal we did not grow ourselves.
In Italy this is not abstract. We have whole regions that exist because someone chose to keep a varietal alive. The Sangiovese clones of Romagna, the Moraiolo olives of Umbria, the raw-milk Casciotta of the Marche — each of these is a fragile platform held up by family-scale producers refusing the easier business decision.
That is why my work has, for thirty-five years, kept returning to the producer. Not because hotels and restaurants matter less, but because they are the table — and the table is only ever as honest as what arrives at it. A breakfast spread that has not asked any questions of its supplier is a breakfast that quietly insults its own guest.
So the consulting I do, when it goes well, is not really about menus or revenue. It is about teaching people to ask the questions they would have asked anyway, had they not been busy. Where does this oil come from? What is its variety? Who is the miller, and what time did the olives leave the tree? What did the grower decide to give up to give us this bottle?
To eat is to participate, said Berry. To welcome a guest is to participate twice — once for yourself, and once for everyone whose hands shaped the meal in front of you. That is the agriculture of hospitality.
— Ettore Bellucci