As the book title infers, Franco Fubini, founder of Natoora, has been on a 20 year quest to put seasonal, flavourful fruits and vegetables on menus and plates around the world. Through the pages he asserts that if the tomato or plum you bite into has memorable flavour, that has been a direct result of the thought, care and love that has brought it to you. The choice of variety, where it was grown, the management of the soil it grew in, the craft and generational knowledge of the farmer and the appropriate supply chain are all integral to experiencing that moment of flavour-filled taste.
Franco takes us back through his itinerant childhood food memories that took his family across continents. Those specific culturally-linked moments where the taste and smell of local foods, grown and prepared with love, are imprinted within us. As much in the book points out, due the way our farm-to-fork supply chain now operates, these flavourful moments of his past are not something everyone today will, or can afford, to experience. Franco’s passion behind the book and his work, is to do everything he can to ensure that we do not slip unconsciously into ‘bland’.
He challenges each of us to see what we choose to eat at every meal as a ‘small revolutionary act’ which collectively could create change. Recognising not everyone has that choice, but for those of us who do, encouraging us to reflect on what we routinely spend on Ultra Processed Food (UPFs) and how we could use our literal spending power, to insist on flavour.
Whilst Franco is hopeful, his description of the next generation of eaters, through his children’s eyes is less so. Given the choice of a Dorito, engineered to perfectly hit our brain’s taste sweet spot or a industrially produced apple that transports well but is pretty tasteless, it seems their food memories are more likely to be ultra processed than rich with the joy of nutritious, seasonal flavour.
Explorations of ‘what is local?’ and the pros and cons of shipping to England from the farm in Spain with the perfect soil and climate for radicchio vs a heated greenhouse growing uniform tomatoes in the next town, are thought-provoking. This is not though, Franco painting an idealistic rural idyll, he is very clear that we have to be creating commercially viable businesses and supply chains to deliver flavour to our plates. What we desire, what we can afford and what we can access stifles or unlocks the potential of a flavour first system. The search for and eating of the perfect peach, is evocative and remind us that what is only fleetingly available, that we anticipate and potentially requires some effort to find, is indeed memorable. Franco needs each one of us to be as passionate about not losing this as he is, and recognise that we have power, through our everyday choices, to be part of a future that has joy giving flavour.
In Search of the Perfect Peach: Why Flavour Holds the Answer to Fixing our Food System, by Franco Fubini. Review by Alice Lewthwaite.
