Slow Food Launches Campaign at the Self-Service Restaurant of the European Parliament in Brussels

The initiative “Slow Food on Your Plate” will bring one Slow Food dish a week to the self-service restaurant in the European Parliament from March 23 to June 16

Slow Food is about to launch the initiative Slow Food on Your Plate as part of a collaboration with the Catering Unit of the European Parliament. The campaign will take place at the self-service restaurant of the European Parliament in Brussels to promote food biodiversity and good, clean, and fair food.

Once a week, from March 23 and to June 16, the restaurant will offer to its clientele, staff and Members of the European Parliament, a dish prepared with ingredients that are local, seasonal and farmed responsibly to give an idea and flavor of local food biodiversity, following a recipe suggested by Slow Food.

The collaboration will also see meetings between Slow Food chefs and canteen staff to discuss the recipes, to exchange ideas and to encourage networking amongst chefs. The launch of the Slow Food on Your Plate initiative will be accompanied by an exhibition on biodiversity to be held in front of the self-service restaurant of the European Parliament during the first week of the collaboration. The so-called Path of Food Biodiversity is an interactive exhibition to explain what food biodiversity is, why it is important, and what one can do individually to safeguard, promote and taste it.

In addition, the collaboration includes 3 tasting sessions taking place once a month (in March, April and May) to offer staff and Members of the European Parliament the opportunity to discover unique food products from across Europe that are at risk of extinction. Slow Food is working to protect and promote these endangered products: they are all documented in the Slow Food “Ark of Taste” online catalogue. Slow Food created the Ark of Taste as a place to record and preserve plant species, animal breeds and artisan products that are tied to the cultures, histories and traditions of specific communities around the world.

Each tasting session will present products from different corners of Europe, focusing on a different food category each time. The first will look at raw milk cheeses; the second at cereals, honeys and fruit preserves; and the third at meat. For each session, the producers will also be present to enable a direct exchange of information between European Parliament staff and the producers.

For further information, please contact the Slow Food International Press Office:

Paola Nano, +39 329 8321285 [email protected]

Slow Food involves over a million of people dedicated to and passionate about good, clean and fair food. This includes chefs, youth, activists, farmers, fishers, experts and academics in over 150 countries; a network of around 100,000 Slow Food members linked to 1,500 local chapters worldwide (known as convivia), contributing through their membership fee, as well as the events and campaigns they organize; and over 2,500 Terra Madre food communities who practice small-scale and sustainable production of quality food around the world.