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World Week of Italian Cuisine

20 - 26 November 2017

CONCEPT

The World Week of Italian Cuisine reaches its second edition with the aim of promoting Italian

culinary traditions and food-and-wine connoisseurship as a distinctive trait of Italian identity

and culture.

The second edition of the Week will take place from 20 to 26 November 2017 under the sign

of: quality, sustainability, culture, food security, the right to food, education, identity, territory

and biodiversity.

Another objective of the Week is to enhance tourist destinations, territories, culinary art

itineraries and the Mediterranean Diet, one of the elements that make Italy the healthiest

Country in the world.

Crucial are also the activities aimed at disseminating and internationalising the training

programmes offered in this sector, to attracting talents from abroad and to strengthen

customer retention for high-quality Italian products.

The project is part of the actions envisaged in the Extraordinary Plan for the Promotion of

Made in Italy, launched by the Italian Government to boost the export and the distribution of

authentic Italian food-and-wine products and falls within the scope of the Strategic Plan for

Tourism 2017-2022, which aims to highlighting abroad the undiscovered Italian Regions.

Key points of the second edition are:

• combining “high-quality cuisine and wine”;

• protecting and leveraging the controlled and protected designation of origin of

products and promoting actions to disseminate Italian brand-protection methods, in

order to launch initiatives to fight the so called Italian sounding;

• promoting regional and food-and-wine tourist itineraries;

• focusing attention on training in the hotel sector, to developing long-term cooperation

between Italian and international chefs;

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• supporting the candidacy of the art of the Neapolitan pizza chefs and of the “le Colline

del Prosecco a Valdobbiadene” site to be included in the UNESCO world heritage list;

• supporting the traditional products of the Regions struck by the earthquake.

The World Week of Italian Cuisine is coordinated by the Working Group established under the

Protocol of Understanding for Maximising Italian High-Quality Cuisine Abroad, chaired by the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in close cooperation with the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and

Forestry Policies (MIPAAF). The Week is organised through a cooperative effort of all the

public and private actors representing the Italian cuisine in the world: institutions (MISE,

MIUR, MIBACT, Regions), ICE-Agency, ENIT, universities, the network of Chambers of

Commerce, trade associations, cooking schools, the network of certified Italian restaurants

and food-and-wine and design companies.

Point of reference for the more than 1000 activities scheduled is the network of 296

diplomatic and consular offices and Italian Cultural Institutes, which will coordinate the

initiatives of all partners, in order to optimise the use of resources, favour an economy of scale

and assure consistency. Priority Countries, target of promotion and communication actions,

are: United States, Canada, Brazil, Russia, China, Japan, and United Arab Emirates.

Workshops and conferences, meetings with the chefs, food-and-wine tasting and dinners,

commercial promotion programmes and cooking classes are some of the foreseen activities.

The Italian cuisine will also be narrated through cultural events, such as the screening of food

related films and documentaries, conferences, concerts, language courses and photography

exhibitions.

To highlight the initiative even further, the "The Extraordinary Italian Taste" logo and the

#ItalianTaste hashtag will be used across social media.