King says slow food and Italy ‘dear to my heart’ at celebrity-packed dinner
Charles gave a speech at Highgrove during the event on Friday evening.
The King has given a speech at a celebrity-filled black tie dinner at Highgrove and said slow food and Italy are “dear to my heart”.
Charles and Camilla were joined by guests including Victoria and David Beckham, fashion designer Donatella Versace, actress Dame Helen Mirren, actor and foodie Stanley Tucci and Tucci’s wife Felicity Blunt – sister of actress Emily Blunt, and former British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful at the dinner to celebrate Italian cuisine on Friday evening.
The Italian ambassador to the UK, Inigo Lambertini, was also invited to the Gloucestershire estate to enjoy a feast of sustainable “slow food”.
The slow food initiative was launched in 1986 in the small Italian town of Bra when food writer Carlo Petrini took exception to the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna, leading to widespread national protests.
It promotes the right to good, clean and fair food for all, and strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine.
Charles has long been a champion of the philosophy.
The event also promoted “slow fashion”, with the King and Queen meeting King’s Foundation’s students and being shown garments demonstrating their sustainable fashion and heritage skills.
The King started and ended his speech speaking Italian, to which the room cheered and clapped.
He said: “Buonasera e un caloroso benvenuto a Highgrove.
“Eccellenze, signore e signori, it is a great joy for my wife and I to welcome you all to Highgrove and, above all, to be able to offer our warmest gratitude to Ambassador Lambertini, to Stanley Tucci, and to chef Francesco Mazzei for their combined efforts to arrange such a special Italian occasion – I can only hope they are still talking to each other at the end of it all!
“Together they conceived and delivered this most splendid evening which brings together two things very dear to my heart – slow food and Italy.
“Our two nations share so many ties – between our peoples; between our cultures; a deep friendship rooted in shared values, mutual affection and mutual respect. A nation’s food culture is a priceless social and environmental asset, intimately bound up with its sense of identity and place.
“Good food brings people together and what we choose to eat helps to define us – as families, communities and nations. It brings us sustenance, but also comfort. It binds generations, as recipes are passed down from one to another. It is a thing of beauty – ‘edible art’, as you have put it, Stanley! And I know that it provides – as it doubtless will this evening – a topic of endless fascination and discussion around every Italian family dinner table.
“But it is about more than that: how we produce our food, and indeed our fashion, and how we source it is intimately entwined with the very future of our planet, and our ability to continue living on it sustainably.”
Charles added he could “scarcely believe” it was over 21 years since he spoke at Carlo Petrini’s Terra Madre conference in Turin – dedicated to the cause of slow food, and added he was “delighted” the topic was now “at the heart of discussions about a sustainable future for our planet”.
He said he was “especially pleased” the dinner comes just a few weeks before the state visit to Italy, adding: “To say that we are looking forward to it would be to engage in a little British understatement…”
The King added: “Allora, grazie di cuore.
“Let me propose a toast: to Italy’s timeless food culture, so loved here in the United Kingdom and across the world [Voglio proporre un brindisi: alla eterna cultura italiana del buon cibo, cosi amata nel Regno Unito e ovunque nel mondo].”
Mr Lambertini also gave a speech, as did Tucci who began by joking “this is just the first of 15 pages”.
He told those gathered how he had embarked on creating the event over lunch with Mr Lambertini.
Tucci paid tribute to the King’s Foundation, which he said promotes the King’s vision of “living in harmony with nature”.
He described how students excelled in slow fashion and slow food, which he described as “two of my obsessions”.
Tucci, describing how the evening was designed, said: “We talked about how to put together this evening.
“We thought that the best idea was to take British produce which a lot of the world doesn’t quite understand is brilliant and put it together with Italian recipes.”
Tucci continued: “We wanted to present it to a group of people that would represent that combination.”
Tucci told those gathered of the importance of sharing food, which he described as a “restorative, connective act”.
