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The Food Programme: The Roots of Italian Cuisine

The Roots of Italian Cuisine

11/06/2007

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, The Roots of Italian Cuisine

Sheila Dillon traces the roots of Italian cuisine in the UK.

Sheila Dillon traces the roots of Italian cuisine in the UK, from the restaurant pioneers of the 1950s to the Michelin-starred dishes of Giorgio Locatelli.

Sheila visits the sites of Soho’s famous Italian restaurants of the 1950’s and 1960’s with Alasdair Sutherland, author of The Spaghetti Tree, including Quo Vadis, a restaurant which first opened in 1926. 

They then visit the original site of La Trattoria Terrazza, opened in 1959 by two former waiters Mario Cassandro and Franco Lagattolla, considered to be one of the first restaurants serving authentic Italian cuisine.

Pioneering restaurant designer Enzo Appicella, talks about his influence on the design of Italian restaurants in the UK. After designing La Trattoria Terrazza he helped create the look of Pizza Express restaurants. 

Alvara Maccioni who now runs La Famiglia restaurant in London explains how he left La Trattoria Terrazza to set up a restaurant in the 1960’s serving Tuscan food. 

A former head chef at La Trattoria Terrazza, Oswaldo Antoniazzi who now works at Giorgio Locatelli’s Locanda Locattelli talks about the way Italian restaurant cooking changed in the 1980’s and Giorgio Locatelli shares his thoughts on what the future might hold. 

Sheila is joined in the studio by chef Alistair Little who introduced new Italian dishes to the UK in the 1980s and Angela Hartnett, head chef at her own restaurant within the Connaught Hotel in London and author of Cucina, Three Generations of Italian Family Cooking.

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