Dining Chair Tourism: Eating the world at Expo Milan 2015

Feeding the planet, energy for life is the title of the 2015 Universal Exhibition, taking place at a sprawling site a stone’s throw from Milan’s city centre. The event aims to celebrate food from across the world, and to promote sustainable farming practices to secure a safer food future for us all. These are all things to be happy about, and the general feeling of positivity is in no way compromised by the fact that, with its astonishing architecture, colourful parades and fancy films it all feels rather a lot like Disneyland. (But with better food.)

The giant trampoline that must be crossed to reach the Brazilian pavilion. No, really.

The Expo is made up of a series of intricately-designed pavilions representing 140 countries, from the Gambia to Iran, Chile to Angola, Nepal to Bulgaria, Egypt, Brazil and more, each of them demonstrating important aspects of the country’s culture and agriculture, and all serving traditional food to visitors. If this weren’t enough, there are also street food vans, posh restaurants, pop-up stalls, entire sections devoted to chocolate and coffee, AND a restaurant for each of Italy’s 20 regions.

The Azerbaijani Pavilion

The anguish of deciding where to eat was considerable: to go to places I knew I would like? Or to go wild and try something I’d never normally consider? I’d have needed about four more days to get everywhere I wanted to go, but here are a few of the best bits:

Kharkade, a vibrant and refreshing hibiscus tea from the Sudan, but drunk across the Middle East. It happened to be ideal for cooling down in the sub-Saharan temperatures Milan was experiencing at the time. 

Delightfully pink kharkade

Israeli shakshuka (an Ottolenghi favourite) – a traditional breakfast dish made with aubergines, tomatoes, feta and braised eggs, served with fresh pitta bread. Too good to be for breakfast only.

Korean Healing Platter, essentially a sample board from the restaurant Bibigo (which you can find in London) offering frothy mushroom porridge, spicy kimchee, Korean rolls and succulent stewed beef.

Bibigo's exquisitely presented Healing Platter

Pasta cacio e pepe, the historical pasta dish that saved Naples from malnutrition in the 16th century (see my entry about it below), made with pecorino and freshly ground black pepper. Comforting stodge at its best.

Given its cornucopia of eating venues, Milan Expo 2015 has been dubbed “the biggest restaurant in the world”; though perhaps this does it a disservice. There are large issues at stake at this event – the statistics on world hunger (currently calculated as one in nine people) displayed in the Vatican City pavilion and Pavilion Zero stand as a stark reminder that the image of plenty diffused by the Expo is not shared by all. Even some of the countries represented at the Expo are plagued with malnutrition, while many of the others are faced with the problem of excessive food waste. It would be easy to say that Expo is quietly glossing over these issues, after all, pictures of children with swollen bellies do not fit with colourful parades of dancing vegetables, and the inclusion of a McDonald’s on site restaurant has raised some eyebrows about the seriousness of the Expo’s commitment to promoting sustainable farming. We can only hope that creation of the pact of Milan, designed to reduce urban food waste in cities around the globe, signals a step in the right direction – though no mention was made of it during my visit.

Making lugaymat doughnuts at the Qatari pavilion

So what does Expo 2015 really offer? Beyond a basic satisfaction of a rumbling stomach, I believe the true success of the Expo was its display of human diversity and ingenuity. I learnt how culture affects cuisine in a myriad of different ways, and was wowed time and again by astonishing images of landscapes I had never heard of in places I have never been and of ingenious techniques devised to feed and water entire populations. International conflict is quietly pushed aside in the aim of celebrating something far greater; our planet and worldwide community. Now that is surely something to be encouraged. 

Prayer flags at the Nepalese pavilion