Veronika Takacs, BBS Global MBA Food and Wine: “Festa a Vico Festa was the opportunity to see world-renowned Chefs share their passion.”

11 June 2018

My name is Veronika Takacs, I’m from Hungary and I’m a student in the BBS Global MBA Food and Wine track. I graduated from Bocconi University in Milan and after a few years of working in Budapest I moved back to Italy three years ago to start working as an analyst in Nielsen. Having a professional background in market research in the fast-moving consumer goods sector means that the incredible world of Italian Food was not completely new to me, but my year in Bologna Business School has shown me that there was no better place to study about Food and Wine than Italy.

We are almost at the end of our program and this year we had the chance to attend many amazing food and wine related events such as Cento mani di questa terra organized by Chef to Chef, Vinitaly and Pitti Taste in Florence. We also visited some famous cantinas like Antinori and Caprai and the Parmesan Cheese factory. And then, on one of our last visits, on an early Sunday morning in June, we travelled to Vico Equense, a small coastal town on the Sorrentine Peninsula, to attend the annual Festa a Vico Festival.

Festa a Vico, a three-day charity event organized by famous Italian chef Gennaro Esposito, saw its 16th edition this year. We attended Repubblica del Cibo (Republic of Food) on Sunday night, when the small town of Vico Equense transforms into one big street food festival, where well-known chefs from all over Italy come together to cook for the visitors. They all have a small stand on the streets where they cook one dish the whole night. People pay a small amount for a tasting and all the money raised goes to charity organizations.

We had the pleasure of talking to many of the chefs, who explained their dishes and shared some thoughts about the festival with us. Most of them have been attending for years and they go back every year for the community, to meet with other chefs, to share ideas and to experiment. Many of them bring their spouses and children, they are there for a good cause and to spend some time with food enthusiasts and fellow chefs. We tried some traditional and some very innovative dishes from orecchiette with horse meat and hamburger with prosciutto to meat tartare and cannoli with mortadella and ricotta. The atmosphere of the festival with the musicians on the streets, the fantastic dishes and the beautiful town of Vico makes for a truly amazing event, probably the best one we have attended this year. I hope I will have the chance to go back another year.

All the events we went to this year gave us a chance to meet people from the field, winemakers, chefs and small producers, who share a common and simple passion: they want to make good food (and wine) and they want to share the Italian food experience with the world because they are proud of what they do. This is one of the things that I take away from my year in Bologna Business School.

The other is the people I’ve meet here. Through the ups and downs, exams, group projects, presentations, I spent a year with wonderful people from all over the world and thanks to them I discovered new things about myself. I became more open-minded and tolerant towards people from other cultures and backgrounds and this experience is something that I will benefit from not only in my career but also in my personal life.

 

Veronika Takacs – Hungary

Global MBA in Food and Wine – Class of 2017/2018



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