An Italian small town entering the world of "social eating"

Nughedu Santa Vittoria (Oristano, Sardinia) is the first Italian village to experience social eating. With only 500 inhabitants, Nughedu has struggled to find ways to fight depopulation and to attract tourists. For this purpose, local authorities decided to give a chance to projects related to "sharing economy" and "smart territories". Among them, the gourmet initiative of social eating. This term describes a meal shared by people who do not know each other but linked by common passion and interests.

Usually, cooks organize dinners at their house and the clients are tourists in live with local cuisine, willing to experience genuine local food. With regard to Nughedu, the first social eating event took place on August 19th and has involved the whole village, where locals welcomed tourists and visitors. For the occasion, the star cook Roberto Petza presented a revisited version of the traditional dish "pasta in brodo".

Gnammo, the Italian social eating platform, sponsored the social dinner offering the clients the chance to buy the tickets online. Gnammo is a startup incubated by the I3P Politecnico in Turin, which assists everyone willing to organize a food event at home. Today, Gnammo has 200.000 users throughout the Italian territory, excited to host social events.

Nughedu social eating was an idea of Nabui, a company active in testing development models with a high social impact. It is part of a broader project known as "Nughedu Welcome", already involving seven cooks and one host ready to offer their cooking skills, using organic local products. Among the remarkable ingredients, the local Barigadu sheep and the homemade bread.

Francesco Mura - mayor of the village - has enthusiastically commented on the initiative, defining it as " part of a bigger project to revive the village, based on a new form of reception of tourists, directly involving citizens".

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