Due mani affettano col coltello lungo una carne stagionata sul tagliere di legno; accanto la bilancia d'ottone, un gomitolo di spago e una forma di pecorino.

Taste and territory

Food Shop

The food shop produces almost nothing, and precisely for that reason it is a craft. Its work is to choose: to go to the market at dawn, to taste, to reject, to keep up the relationship with those who grow and those who age, and then to put on the counter only what it can answer for in person.

It is the oldest trade in commerce and the first to have been declared dead. It is not: what died is the shop that sold the same things as the supermarket at a higher price. The one that remains sells something the supermarket does not have, namely somebody who puts their own face to it.

Un vicolo lastricato con l'arco di pietra in fondo; dal portone aperto di una bottega si vedono i prosciutti appesi, e sul gradino una cassetta di verdure e un secchio di zinco.

Where

Where it is practised in Tuscany

It is an urban craft, and in Tuscany it is concentrated where there are still neighbourhoods with a life of their own: the quarters of Livorno, the Oltrarno and the market districts of Firenze, the historic centres of Pisa, Lucca and Arezzo, the villages of the Chianti and the Val d'Orcia where the shop is the only one left.

In the smaller villages it is often the last commercial presence: the shop closes and the village loses at once its shopping, its meeting point and the person who notices if somebody has not come out of the house for two days. It is a function that appears in no set of accounts.

Una bilancia d'ottone coi pesi, un coltello lungo e una mannaia sul tagliere, un rotolo di carta oleata, il gomitolo di spago e una forma di formaggio.

How

The techniques of the craft

The skills are four, and none of them is learnt on a course. Selection: recognising the right ripeness, understanding at a glance whether an artichoke was picked yesterday or last week. Cutting: slicing a prosciutto to the thickness that that prosciutto asks for, which is never the same for every one.

Ageing: keeping cheeses and cured meats in a cold room almost always carved out of a back room, controlling humidity and temperature by nose before by thermometer. And advice: knowing what to suggest to somebody who comes in without knowing what they want, which is the part that holds up all the others.

Many shops have added a wine bar and the making up of hampers, which are the two ways the craft has managed to go beyond the daily shop.

L'interno di una bottega con gli scaffali di bottiglie e vasi, i prosciutti appesi alla trave e il banco di marmo; in fondo un uomo col grembiule lavora di spalle.

Now

The craft today

The arithmetic is hard: rents in the historic centres, long hours, tight margins on every single product. Those who hold out do so by specialising — the wine bar, corporate hampers, prepared food, shipping — or by spreading over several addresses to keep the same suppliers turning.

The push that helps comes from consumers who have stopped treating price as the only figure: those looking for the short supply chain, those who want to know the producer's name, those who prefer to buy less and better. The food shop was already serving that demand before it became a trend.

The producers of this craft

Al Bottegone Al BottegoneVia Demi, Livorno Alimentari Procissi Alimentari ProcissiLocalità Capanna, Altopascio