Massimo Bottura Joins the Tishman Center as a Visiting Scholar in Spring 2017

Massimo Bottura, famed Italian restaurateur, is joining the Tishman Environment and Design Center during the Spring 2017 semester as a Visiting Scholar. Bottura  will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Zero Waste Food conference on April 28-29. Tishman Center Affiliated Faculty, Fabio Parasecoli is collaborating with the Institute of Culinary Education to organize and curate the Zero Waste Food conference and will also moderate a special panel, Reimagining Sustainable Connections Within Food Chains at the conference. The Zero Waste Food conference will focus on how we can discover better methods for the way we produce, distribute, consume and dispose of food in the environments where we cook and where we eat.The Conference will bridge the gap between research and practice, and draw upon the perspectives of academia, activism, food business, chefs and food producers in order to synthesize our shared goals and strategies to create a more sustainable food network in the 21st century.Massimo opened Osteria Francescana in 1995 in his hometown of Modena, Italy. Over the past decade, he has become the leader of the contemporary Italian kitchen. In June 2016, Osteria Francescana was awarded the No. 1 position on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list. Through his nonprofit, Food for Soul, he aims to empower communities to fight food waste through social inclusion. His goal is to encourage public, private and nonprofit organizations to create and sustain community kitchens around the world. Each project aims to bring a sense of dignity back to the table by promoting the values of art and beauty, encouraging solidarity within local communities and recovering food, places and people. The Refettorio initiatives he launched during the Milano Expo in 2015 and the Rio Olympics in 2016 reflect this approach, offering a relevant template in rethinking food distribution and consumption.