Article
Italian
ID: <
10.4000/italies.3375>
·
DOI: <
10.4000/italies.3375>
Abstract
In the 1970s and 1980s, Italian catering was the spearhead of the food industry in Switzerland, due to the excellent value for money offered, the popularity of its gastronomy and the assimilation of the majority of Swiss to the Italian minority; however, the beginnings of such success are rooted in situations of surreptitious or blatant xenophobia, job and social insecurity, disadaptation, nostalgic depression, marginalisation, and alienation, which crystallised long flaws in economic exploitation and mutual moral unwillingness to diverge. The story of Giovanni (Nino) Garofoli (Pane and Cioccolata, Franco BRUSATI, with Nino Manfredi, 1973), a seasonal waiter apprentice in a restaurant in Germany in the mid-1970s, embodies the recurring incipit of many of the future restaurateurs who will be aware of acts of dignity and satisfaction from initial crisalides of distress and discomfort.