Necessity is the mother of invention: against the high energy prices, restaurant and café owners in Italy are looking for solutions to reduce electricity and gas bills. So some rely on a romantic candlelight atmosphere to save electricity. Chefs are forced to change their cuisine and menus to cope with rising costs.
A Frisian chef involves the entire village where he lives and works to raise awareness of the problem of high restaurant bills. Stefano Buttazzoni organizes a weekly dinner in the osteria “Al Grappolo d’Oro” in Colle di Arba, in the province of Pordenone, “as in the old days”: everyone sits around the table by candlelight. Artificial light and gas are prohibited and no one is allowed to use their cell phone.
“More cooking on the wood stove”
Buttazzoni is very specifically committed to energy saving in the kitchen. “Small companies like mine have always been cautious about spending, but now the focus is particularly high. For example, the pilot flame, which is normally always on, goes out when there is no cooking. And I try to cook as much as possible on the wood stove, especially for longer cooking times such as B. at minestrone”, Buttazzoni told the daily newspaper “La Repubblica”. He even had to omit one of his most famous dishes, the mountain spice cake, because it had to stay in the oven too long.
Chefs from north to south devise strategies to save gas. “We have changed the way we prepare the dishes and almost completely eliminated the oven. For example, our specialty Vitello tonnato is now grilled. We avoid cooking with electricity: potatoes under the ashes, grilled fish are the order of the day. Although these cooking methods require more time and effort to achieve satisfactory results, in the end it is a return to the past that also gives a creative impulse,” says Gianluca Formichella of restaurant Forma in the port city of Civitavecchia, near Rome.
LED lighting and fewer dishes
In Rome, Michelin-starred chef Cristina Bowerman tries to tackle the hefty bills from multiple angles. First, she replaced all the light bulbs in her restaurant with very low-consumption LED bulbs. “They cost a little more, but it’s a good investment in the long run. Thanks to the domotics, the air conditioning and heating are switched on at certain times, which saves money. After that, the number of dishes on the menu was reduced, resulting in less preparation and fewer raw materials to process. But above all, I try to optimize the oven’s consumption,” says the star chef.
Meanwhile, cases are increasing across Italy of entrepreneurs and restaurateurs posting high electricity and gas bills on their menus or in their shop windows to protest the price hikes and energy crisis that are pushing their prices up. The campaign is actively supported by the trade association Confcommercio. The association has started handing out a picture frame to local operators to make the latest gas and electricity bills visible to the public. “A large-scale nationwide campaign aims to show citizens and customers of bars and restaurants in the dramatic situation our entrepreneurs find themselves in,” laments Aldo Cursano, vice president of FIPE-Confcommercio.
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
