by Francesco Redi
Let me tell you that before organising the Tiramisù World Cup, I did something else. I studied a lot, I got Masters and I worked in the Board of the European University for Tourism (my favourite project) and, most of all, I travelled so much, mainly in Asia.
Travelling was important for me, it opened my mind and allowed me to meet a lot of fantastic friends. However, I often had dinner at the restaurant and all of them served my beloved tiramisù. Tiramisù means home for me. When I lived at my parents’, I always asked my mom to prepare a bunk of tiramisu for my birthday, hypnotised by the cream and by the biscuits.
During these dinners abroad, I recollected when I just arrived in Treviso at the end of the ’70s, everyone was crazy for tiramisu and proud because it was original from this city.
But in 2000 it was at that point famous everywhere. So, I asked my friends: “Where is it from?” and they often didn’t know the answer, inattentive and gourmand.
“Japan! Ti-ra-mi-su!” some said, probably joking. Others went for “Argentina”, surely confusing it for tres-leches (another dessert I love).
Lots of them knew it was Italian, but not exactly of which city. Anyway, lots of them told me they had a mom, uncle, aunt, partner, friend that make the best tiramisu in the world.
“To be true” I was thinking “my mother makes the best tiramisu in the world”, so I was sure they were telling lies. Back to Treviso, in 2013 I kept on eating great tiramisù… and there still were a lot of people making the best tiramisu in the world. But, discovering that over Twitter there were thousands of people from all over the world making and tasting the best tiramisù was very confusing for me. There were at least 100 Tweets per hour!
Some years later, learning more about Google, I saw that users searched “tiramisu” more than twice the times they searched “Prosecco”. Interesting to know, “tiramisu” is usually searched half of the times of “Venice”, but not in the Christmas period, when “tiramisu” is searched more.
“Wow” I thought “how can I tell all these people about how amazing the city of Treviso is, and make them arrive in this part of Italy?”
Thinking about it, the word of Prof. Salvatore Messina – my mentor – important academic and scholar, but at the same time a great gourmand, came into my mind “…. It’s worth a world championship” he always exclaimed when eating something very yummy.
A world championship of tiramisù … what a crazy idea! But only for amateurs, because tiramisù is traditionally home-made …. This way we will be sure to find who make the best tiramisù in the world!
I talked to people, stressed my loved partner Marta, I wrote a scientific article to describe the model, and still there were people laughing behind: until when – along with Martina, Debora and Carlotta – we organized the first edition, that rocked and that marked an important moment for the history of this dessert.
Today the history is written by you, with your recipes, the teams, the warm-ups, the competitions and your fantastic posts with your tasty creations.
But people still keep on asking me… is tiramisù from Treviso or from Friuli?
