The Municipality of Palermo: «Proud of the event, now a tender to recover all the spaces of the exhibition center”
Everything is ready for the eighth edition of Expocook and the Municipality of Palermo decides to make it a springboard for the recovery of the Mediterranean Fair, through a tender for the renovation of disused spaces.
«We found the city’s exhibition center in a state of abandonment», declares the councilor for Productive Activities of the Municipality of Palermo, Giuliano Forzinetti, during the presentation of Expocook 2024, in the Mario Palumbo press room of the Sicilian Regional Assembly. «We have started with the essential works – adds the councilor – to make the pavilions usable again and make them available to Expocook. For the administration it is a source of great pride to be able to host such a prestigious event at the Mediterranean Fair. That’s why we won’t stop from here on out. The Fair’s recovery machine has started moving, now we need to accelerate its progress. To do this, we are opening the doors to collaboration with private individuals and we are preparing a tender to look for partners. In the meantime, we will use the regional resources that we already have available for the first renovation works.”
The Municipality’s commitment is rewarded by Expocook 2024, which from Monday 11th to Thursday 14th March will fill the spaces of the Fair with great chefs, internationally renowned pastry chefs, pizza chefs, barmen, catering and tourism companies. Twenty-five thousand square meters of exhibition area, 15 thematic sectors, six pavilions and 250 stands. The program for the four intense days of the event includes various moments aimed at enhancing food and wine excellence, tastings, cooking shows, debates, masterclasses, seminars and conferences with the highest exponents of Italian cuisine. «Over the years we have become a point of reference for the restaurant and hotel sectors», says Fabio Sciortino, project manager of Expocook. «From 11 to 14 March – he continues – we will have over 500 chefs from all over Italy and 150 pizza chefs who will compete in the world pizza championship. There are five hotels in the city sold out and companies from all over Europe will be present.”
«The ideal way to make the best Sicilian and national agri-food production also an opportunity for tourism development», claims Fratelli d’Italia senator Raoul Russo, who last January offered Expocook the prestigious showcase of Palazzo Giustiniani, in Rome, for a vernissage intended to make the Palermo taste fair a driving force for the candidacy of Italian cuisine as a UNESCO intangible heritage site.
The best Sicilian companies in the sector sense that it is time to unite in the ambitious project of bringing the world of food to national and international attention. «My presence here – says Nicola Fiasconaro, spearhead of the confectionery industry – is to try to network with the organizers and with the entire Sicilian agri-food system, thanks to an exhibition that brings the most prestigious Italian industries in the sector”. It is no coincidence that the Italian Chefs Federation also chose Expocook to bring together its national council. It had never happened in Palermo, as the president of the Regional Union of Sicilian Chefs, Rosario Seidita, explains: «On 11 and 12 March – he announces – the National Council of the FIC will decide the activities for the entire year and they will be present for the foreign delegations also took advantage of this opportunity.”
For the business world, Expocook is an unmissable opportunity to discover news and trends in various fields of food and wine, such as professional equipment, management software, indoor and outdoor furnishings, accessories and tableware, as well as food and beverage, bakery, pizza and pasta, ice cream and pastry. For the public it is also an opportunity to attend cooking shows with this year’s numerous guest stars: above all Iginio Massari, the most famous Italian pastry chef in the world, and then Nicola and Mario Fiasconaro, Pino Scaringella, Giovanni Cappello, Enrico Derflingher , Giuseppe Causarano, Giuseppe Torrisi, Roberto Cascino and many others.
A large sector of the event will host the world pizza championship (Expocook Pizza World Competition), coordinated by Enrico Bianchini and with the presence of master pizza chefs of the caliber of Francesco Martucci, Antonio Starita and Errico Porzio on the jury, who will also be protagonists of the cooking shows on the main stage.
Many stands and events are linked to training, including those of Eurofom and the Cascino hotel institute. Uet Italia, the European university school for tourism, will also organize a conference on Monday 11 March at 11.30 am on the theme of “Innovation for tourism and hospitality businesses”, as announced by the president Marina Ambrosecchio during the presentation of Expocook . «Food – she explains – is today a driving transversal element for tourism. Food and wine is the culture and marketing of our territory, excellence at an international level and an extraordinary opportunity for economic development, increasingly in the name of product digitalisation, on which the Uet has been providing high-level training for years.”
Entry to Expocook is free, upon registration on the website https://www.expocook.org via the Expocook app.
The presentation, on Women’s Day, was colored and perfumed by the gift for the women present offered by Aromatiche Madonie, who distributed bunches of lavender, oregano and chilli pepper.
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