A new chapter for Casa Artusi: the restaurant reopens with cuisine and social inclusion

After more than a year with the shutters down, since April last year, the restaurant at Casa Artusi – the centre for gastronomic culture named after the great Pellegrino, father of modern Italian cuisine – is finally reopening its doors. It will reopen temporarily for the Festa Artusiana, one of the most renowned festivals dedicated to gastronomic culture, organised by the municipality of Forlimpopoli since 1997, and this year taking place from 28 June to 6 July. An official preview, which will be followed by a full reopening scheduled for this coming autumn, possibly as early as September. The new management of the restaurant will be led by the BBP Group – Social&Food Experience, a business venture founded in 2019 by Cristofaro Basile, currently running six venues between Cesena and Forlì with a clear mission: to combine food service with inclusion, welcoming into the kitchen and dining room individuals with disabilities or social vulnerabilities. The contractual agreement signed with the Casa Artusi Foundation is for 12 years. Heading the kitchen brigade will be Chef Stefano Faccini.

The new era of the Casa Artusi Restaurant

The restaurant is located within the monumental complex of the former Servi di Maria convent, a space of around 3,000 square metres, which was transformed in 2007 into Casa Artusi, a centre for gastronomic culture dedicated to Pellegrino Artusi, who more than a century ago collected and organised our country's culinary traditions in the book Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well. The monumental complex is owned by the municipality of Forlimpopoli, which has granted the premises to the Casa Artusi Foundation on a free-loan basis and has overseen renovation works, which began at the end of 2024.
"Here we have the library, the school and cooking classes, the restaurant, the wine cellar and the museum, where objects and books that belonged to Pellegrino are kept," explains Laila Tentoni, president of the Casa Artusi Foundation. "There is also a new interactive digital station inaugurated in April this year, where the 790 recipes from his manual can be searched by recipe, ingredient, product, and region."

What will be served at the new restaurant

We don’t yet know exactly what will be served or how it will be served at the “new” Casa Artusi restaurant, but we can get an idea based on what the Foundation’s president has previewed.
"There will be Artusian recipes, but not only those. It will be a completely renewed venue, featuring dishes from Italian home cooking as well as openings to the new and the future. The ambition is to open other Artusian restaurants around the world – a dream that’s been in the drawer, but all the conditions are there to make it come true."

The return of conferences at the Festa Artusiana 2025

Meanwhile, the 23rd edition of the Festa Artusiana is being prepared, with gastronomic and entertainment events that, as always, will liven up the historic centre of “Frampùla” – Forlimpopoli in the Romagnol dialect. An edition that is intended to be especially grand.
"Last year, the cultural aspect was missing," admits Enrico Monti, municipal councillor for culture. "This year, we want to bring it back. For the 2025 edition, we’ve organised a distributed conference titled Food Intelligences, with nine cultural meetings to take place throughout the event."
It’s about time, some might say – those who lamented the absence of the “intellectual” aspect, always a vital element of the Festa Artusiana.

The hope is that this refreshing push will energise the various realities linked to Casa Artusi, which are currently in a holding phase. The new board of directors of the Casa Artusi Foundation has yet to be appointed, after the previous term ended a couple of months ago (“the timing is completely normal, it’s just the usual delay,” clarifies Laila Tentoni, who is not eligible for a third term).
For the new presidency, the municipality of Forlimpopoli has put forward the name of Andrea Segrè, former Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture in Bologna and winner of the 2012 Artusi Prize for the Last Minute Market project (a sustainable and socially responsible initiative for recovering unsold food from the market); confirmation now depends on the opinion of the Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì Foundation (together with the municipality, the co-founder of the Casa Artusi Foundation).

Also on standby is the renewal of the positions within Smart, the benefit corporation for Artusian marketing (the term of president Monica Fantini has expired, and director Chiara Galbiati has resigned), and the role of director of Casa Artusi remains vacant after the resignations first of Susy Patrito Silva and then of Emanuela Bagnolini.
Resignations, according to Laila Tentoni, that were due to “personal choices”.