There was a time when VIPs loved ethnic food and the macrobiotic diet but those days seem to be long gone. What has changed?
THE IMPORTANCE OF ITALIAN FOOD – That Italian food was renowned worldwide was a given, just as that it is among the tastiest and healthy cuisines there are out there. It is no surprise, then, that Italian restaurants abroad abound and that many of them, from the home-run ‘trattoria’ to the fancy restaurant with a Michelin-starred chef, are enormously successful with all kinds of people. What is surprising, however, is that even the VIPs are starting to take notice and that, one after the other, they are jumping on this culinary bandwagon.
WHO’S WHO IN ITALIAN FOOD ABROAD? – Many Hollywood stars and popular singers have in fact recently invested in Italian food products. The first to discover this gold mine was probably Sting. During an interview for an article dedicated to his 60-year-old career, the singer from the uber-famous band Police told “The Guardian” about his farm in Figline Valdarno in Tuscany, about 30 km south of Florence. There he produces extra virgin olive oil, acacia and chestnut honey, jams and marmalades as well as fruits and vegetables, and he uses the place to relax and let nature inspire him and his work.
VIPS WHO LOVE ITALIAN FOOD – But Sting is not the only one. Danny De Vito, popular actor best remembered for his role in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Wars of the Roses”, has now turned to agriculture too and is the proud produces of the Limoncello Premium, a liquor made from the lemons of Sorrento. And others stars too have turned to Italian food as a source of both pleasure and income, many of them by opening or buying restaurants to serve genuine specialties from Italy. A few names? Lady Gaga, for example, opened “Joanne”, a typical Italian ‘trattoria’ which her parents will run and which will bring the Tuscan countryside on Columbus Avenue, New York. But she was not the first; rather, she followed the example of other VIPs such as Sylvester Stallone, Danny De Vito and Charlue Sheen who have recently bought a restaurant in California, the “Buca di Beppo”. And the trend doesn’t stop with actors and singers: director Francis Ford Coppola is the proud owner of “Café Zoetrope” in san Francisco while the ex-wrestling champion Hulk Hogan founded “Pastamania”, a restaurant chain that extends throughout the Middle East as well as India, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.