In Bologna, I visited Café Marinetti, where Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who started the Futurist Movement, hung out with his futurist friends and discussed the evils of eating pasta.
Café Marinetti was once called a Bar.
In Italy, “bar” and “caffè” (only one f in the Marinetti Café ) are often used interchangeably. A bar is usually an informal place serving coffee, pastries and alcohol throughout the day, while a caffè may suggest a more traditional or elegant setting. Both are important social spaces where locals
Ironically, Marinetti’s attack on pasta helped make Futurist cooking famous. Although most of the culinary ideas were never widely adopted, the movement anticipated later interests in experimental gastronomy, food presentation and the idea that dining could be a form of artistic performance.
I did not expect to find Café Marinetti, to be part of a Grand Hotel.
Grand Hotel Majestic – Café Marinetti
Café Marinetti is located in the Grand Hotel Majestic “Gia Baglioni”. It is an 18th-century palazzo across the street from the Cattedrale Metropolitana di San Pietro and only a 5-minute walk from the Towers of Bologna.
The hotel is decorated with Baroque details, expensive paintings and photographs of famous visiting celebrities – Frank Sinatra, Eva Gardner, Princess Diana, Sting, Bruce Springsteen and others. It has continued to be famous.
The hotel is very luxurious and when was entering there was a Bentley, a Ferrari and a sports BMW collecting and dropping off guests.
Café Marinetti is frequented by well heeled guests as I imagine it was then during Marinetti’s time.
But who was Marinetti?
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) was an Italian poet, writer, editor and someone who loved to stir things up, best known for starting the Futurist movement—one of the most daring artistic and cultural movements of the early 20th century. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, to Italian parents, Marinetti went to school in Paris and made some pretty good connections with both French and Italian writers.
Back in 1909, he put out the famous Manifesto of Futurism on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro. This manifesto was all about celebrating speed, machines, technology, young people and modern city life, while saying goodbye to old traditions. Marinetti and the Futurists were big fans of cars, factories, electricity and movement, thinking that modern life needed a whole new way of making art. They loved trying new things in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music and theatre.
Marinetti is still a pretty important person in modern European culture because Futurism really shaped modern art, graphic design, advertising, typography, architecture and avant-garde literature all over the 20th century.
Manifesto of Futurist Cooking
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti gained a bit of a reputation for his pasta-bashing, seeing it as a symbol of Italy’s hold on tradition and what he thought was a cultural lull. In the 1930 Manifesto of Futurist Cooking, co-authored with a painter called Fillìa.
Marinetti claimed that pasta made Italians sluggish, gloomy and slow. He thought modern Italians should eat foods that mirrored speed, energy, machinery and innovation—the very essence of Futurism.
Marinetti suggested swapping pasta for more experimental dishes made from meat, veggies, essences, textures and dramatic presentation. Futurist banquets often turned into shows, with wild flavour combinations, tactile experiences and even scents designed to tickle all the senses. I have seen copies of this book and can confirm that some dishes had intentionally strange names and presentations meant to shock diners and shake up culinary norms.
His pasta-hating campaign really stirred things up in Italy, where pasta was a big part of regional identity and everyday life. Many folks laughed at his ideas, especially in the south where pasta was king. Newspapers and cartoonists poked fun at the movement, and pasta producers were dead set defending their traditional food.
But it is interesting to see that pasta features on the menu at Café Marinetti.
John McGrath reviewed my book, Sicilian Seafood Cooking in the Adelaide Review. he mentions Filippo Tommaso Marinetti:
ADELAIDE REVIEW OF ‘SICILIAN SEAFOOD COOKING
The cuisine of Emilia
And when in Bologna (in the region of Emilia-Romagna) we must acknowledge the Bolognese Ragù.
This recipe can be found on The Great Italian Chefs Web Site.
N.B. My mother used to add cream rather than milk, and a little grated nutmeg. She also added a little rosemary.
BOLOGNESE RAGÙ
- 300g of beef mince
- 150g of pork mince
- 50g of unsalted butter
- 50g of onion finely chopped
- 50g of carrot finely chopped
- 50g of celery finely chopped
- 125ml of red wine
- 30g of tomato paste, triple concentrated
- 125ml of whole milk
- salt to taste
- black pepper to taste
……or tortellini or to make a lasagna.
