05/28/2026
Carlo Petrini – A Tribute to the founder of Slow Food
I first met Carlo in 2008 when he came to accept an award and kick-off a new Eco-Gastronomy program he inspired at the University of New Hampshire. As a Curator of Historic Landscapes for a museum nearby, I curated a regional Slow Food meal to welcome him and launch the new chapter of Slow Food we inaugurated that afternoon. I helped conjure up many of the talents in my community to serve a meal of native and heirloom foods collected from the four centuries of original backyard gardens and orchards at the museum. As I explained the history and cultural importance of the foods being served, his first question of me regarding a particular heirloom was ‘but does it taste good?’ Taste memory confirmed the answer for everyone that filled the room to join in another chapter of the worldwide movement he created.
Over the years, I was fortunate to visit Italy as a regional delegate for Terra Madre – something of a local-foods united nations. Over the years, this network of food communities grew from a few thousand to nearly ten thousand attendees from over 130 nations around the world. We all wore headsets to translate discussions into our own native tongues, but the common language was food and participating in community as a vehicle for change. Carlo modeled the effectiveness of acting locally to effect a worldwide shift for our food systems, gastronomy, globalism, ethics and economics.
He founded Slow Food to counter the opening of a fast food chain in Rome, and he did so by serving up dishes of pasta with tomato sauce and asking those attending which was ‘real food’…yet his answer was not to suggest the world eat like Italians, but that each of us should work in community to rediscover the traditional local foods and agricultural methods which could help to revitalize agriculture, local economies, and alternatives to the industrial and processed foods that were being forced down our throats. Since that time in 1986, his worked helped to redefine the value of fresh, ripe, seasonal foods, the preservation of heirloom biodiversity and the pleasures of the table.
For many of us, the appeal was in discovering that Slow Food was not a soapbox issue, but a delicious revolution/evolution that spoke for itself through flavor, nutrition, humanity and joy. A slow life best enjoyed in community around the table. Each time I returned as a delegate, the movement continued to expand and shift under his guidance. He inspired us to grow our agricultural markets, artisanal food products and ‘good, clean and fair’ food systems that nurtured growers, producers, eaters and the earth in equal measure.
Over the years, I returned as a chapter leader, a regional governor and a biodiversity specialist. Though I was among thousands of delegates, he always remembered the ‘pleasures of the table’ shared at our first meeting and probed to learn more about what was taking shape. Each time he inspired me to continue my work fostering a ‘culture of slow’. Since Slow Food found its foothold in America in 2000, we grew from a nation of approximately 1,000 farmers markets, to one of well over 20,000. Along with this resurgence came a changed food system where fresh, ripe, heirloom and organic are the resilient local alternatives which are still lending shape to a cultural shift which gives me hope on the darkest news days. Carlo built a movement of school gardens, community gardens, respect for farmers and a value for the new agricultural marketplace he inspired all of us to build in our own communities around the world.
In a year where we have lost Jane Goodall and Carlo Petrini, I am reminded that while one person alone cannot always change the world, they can inspire movements which help us to evolve in this long arc of humanity. Movements that remind me nearly every day, that the greatest antidote to despair is action. While my first book does not focus on Slow Food, he inspired in me a call to write about living the values of a slow life in the area I know best – gardening. The forward he contributed to my book notes that it ‘celebrates the creative ways that people are bringing hand-crafted goods to market in meaningful and sustainable ways’
Carlo was a global inspiration and my hope at his passing, is that in the face of a fractious world, we find and foster hope in the good change we can help to effect within our reach – be it in our nation, our region, or around our kitchen table.
Learn more about Carlo and Slow Food in this piece in today's NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/dining/carlo-petrini-dead.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwY2xjawSB4vJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeN_SCGhQYEmftXMEgMDgSUyrBzSXD4kKbql1oxeZ2nFXsetsLKI8p-ThcnYk_aem_wel8bMYeWpP_5hzwyehQ8w
