A girl and a dream called Street food.

My name is Paola Luzzara and I'm 25 years old, I live in the province of Turin. My life has been influenced by food, especially high quality food, that is genuine and traditional.
My love for travelling and for culture has led me to move for same time to England, where I have missed “home food”. It seems a cliché but food is not only vitamins or minerals; food is memory, taste, flavour, dreams and when we are far from Italy finding all these things again is difficult.

I have immediately realized that I wanted to share with other people the gastronomic roots that have been a part of me for a long time. Through my easygoing character and love for food and for cuisine in itself, I have directed my studies in Economics toward the application of a business in which Italian food could become a way to promote food quality and conviviality in a simpler kind of restaurant.

Street food is the right way to make handmade Italian food popular.
I have a dream: creating some menus and offering them to people that can appreciate cultures which are different from theirs. Condensing in a sandwich the best known Italian food tastes, using the formula of low price and high quality.

I’d like to use for my sandwiches the delicious Culatello of Zibello, Mantovane Mustard, different types of goat cheese with organic honey from some areas in Piedmont and the sausage of Bra with flakes of Parmigiano Reggiano and crushed walnuts. In this way my customers would steer clear of the usual stereotype of Italian food = pizza + spaghetti.

My degree deals with food Quality and with how food can have an impact on people’s health. For me the quality of food is equal to the quality of the end user’s health. During my “food and wine trips” I have always tried to come into contact with small handicraft realities that ensure that the authenticity of products (especially km-0 products) is maintained by the preparation of food.
My idea of street food is first of all proposing to my potential customers freshness of foods, handmade preparation and respect for tradition; then conveying what food means for Italian people and therefore Culture.

My greatest joy is to sit on a bench in a park in Birmingham, together with other foreigners like me and to give them a taste of my “being Italian”, through one of the sandwiches I have created.

Paola Luzzara, 29 ottobre 2015.