One of the world’s top chefs will open a community restaurant for homeless people in Sydney with the help of food rescue organisation Oz Harvest.
Speaking with Ray Martin at an event in Sydney on Wednesday night, Italian chef Massimo Bottura praised the OzHarvest founder and chief executive, Ronni Kahn, describing her as “an amazing woman ... doing a fantastic job” and said they would soon open a refettorio together.
A refettorio is a restaurant where renowned chefs use rescued food to create meals for vulnerable locals. Bottura suggested some of Australia’s top chefs would pitch in to help at the Sydney restaurant, saying: “It’s going to be so easy to build.”
In Australia, more than five million tonnes of food ends up in landfill, costing an estimated $20bn a year. OzHarvest collects over 180 tonnes of food each week from food donors across Australia, including supermarkets, restaurants and catering companies.
On Thursday Kahn confirmed the project would go ahead: “We are definitely going to bring Massimo’s refettorio to Australia. I’m currently looking at locations in Sydney, so if anyone has a space to offer, give me a call.”
She said the pair hoped to open it this year, depending on the location. It would be run by chefs and volunteers, and they also planned to “offer a shared experience for the whole community”.
Kahn said OzHarvest would look after the site, operations, volunteers and supply of rescued food. Once the restaurant opened, they would also communicate with charity agencies that feed people in need.
Kahn and Bottura met in 2016. A year later they hosted a “cooking with a conscience” dinner with nine of Australia’s top chefs.
Kahn described Bottura as “like meeting a kindred spirit that I had known all my life. We share the same passion, values and vision to create a better world, and are both determined to make a difference”.
Bottura opened his first refettorio in Milan in 2015. In 2016, he and wife Lara Gilmore founded Food for Soul, a not-for-profit organisation which aims “to empower communities to fight food waste through social inclusion”. There are currently refettorios (which comes from the Latin word reficere, meaning to remake or restore) in Milan, Rio de Janeiro, London and Paris.
Asked why he does these projects, Bottura said: “It’s something you have inside, you can focus on making money or you can focus on building refettorio.”
Bottura’s three-Michelin-star restaurant Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy was voted the world’s best restaurant in 2018. The restaurant also held the title in 2016. Bottura received worldwide attention after he starred in the first episode of Netflix series Chef’s Table.
He is renowned for his disruptive approach to cooking, with cult dishes such as “Oops! I dropped the lemon tart” and “the crunchy part of the lasagna”.
At Wednesday’s event in Sydney, Bottura said: “I get all these flavours that are so familiar to me and I try to feed the people with emotions. They don’t need a big pan of lasagne if they come to Osteria, they need a little crunchy part.”
Bottura will return to Australia in August for a series of stage shows in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
