The Week of Italian Cuisine in the World, an annual event organised on a global scale by the Italian diplomatic network dedicated to the promotion of the country's food and agriculture, is being held again this year in Tashkent. The Italian Embassy and the ICE Office in Uzbekistan have joined the initiative "Mediterranean Diet and Roots Cuisine: Health and Tradition", a segment dedicated to the scientific dimension of the Mediterranean Diet.
The main event, the embassy announced in a note, was held yesterday evening, 21 November, in Tashkent with a gala dinner for around 80 guests at the Mediterranean cuisine restaurant Nobile, to which Peppe Zullo, an Italian chef of Apulian origin and owner of restaurants in the United States and Italy and inspirer of important national and international projects, was invited. Zullo was the first testimonial of Med Food Anticancer, a programme promoting the Mediterranean diet as a method of active prevention of diet-related degenerative diseases, and represented Apulian cuisine at the EXPO in Milan. With the 'La Fabbrica del Paesaggio' award, a competition devised and organised by the Italian Federation of UNESCO Clubs and Centres, Chef Zullo has demonstrated through his creation 'Villa Jamele' how eco-sustainability and genuine food can come together in a marriage of respect for the environment and goodness of food. From collaborations with Canadian and US universities to various TV programmes, Chef Zullo has been included in the Forbes 2020 ranking of the '100 Italian Excellencies' for the restaurant industry.
The evening also included an award ceremony for chef Giorgio Bicorni, who was honoured by Ambassador Agostino Pinna as a pioneer of Italian cuisine in Uzbekistan, for his work through the 2019 opening of the L'Opera restaurant in Tashkent, which paved the way for several other Italian food restaurants that are now among the capital's most popular and appreciated non-Uzbek cuisine restaurants.
The gala dinner was also an opportunity for Ambassador Pinna, who is about to end his diplomatic mission in Uzbekistan at the end of November after four years and four months, to greet high-level representatives of the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, colleagues from the diplomatic corps, and other leading figures from the country's cultural and economic world.
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