ISSUE Vol.6 BRA’S: Exploring the Connection Between Food and the Town

Gastronomy is Not About Haute Cuisine

I never knew so many people lived in Bra, a town of around 30,000 residents. I kept thinking about this while walking through the streets.

BRA’S is a festival and celebrates its local speciality, Salsiccia di Bra, a type of sausage. It is organised by the Piedmont Region, Confcommercio Ascom Bra and the Municipality of Bra.

While Slow Food and the University of Gastronomic Sciences prepared for the following week’s Salone del Gusto, local authorities and businesses led the way in reviving the town through food.

Food stalls lined the squares, cooking shows took place, and DJs played music in the evenings. When I visited on Friday night, streets bustled with crowds eating, drinking, and enjoying themselves.

I love the atmosphere of these Italian events.

I also had a tagliere, a platter of cheeses and salamis. There was plenty of delicious food, but also long queues, focaccia that was a little dry, and rich cheeses that filled me up more than I expected. Sharing our thoughts about everything we ate was part of the festival experience, too.

At the Castelmagno DOP stand, I was shown a well-aged cheese. I loved its unusual texture, which felt slightly grainy and crumbled delicately in my mouth. They explained that the cheese is melted with milk or cream to make a sauce for gnocchi. One of the pleasures of events like these is not just buying and tasting local products, but hearing directly from members of the producers’ consortium, whom I would rarely otherwise have the chance to speak to, about how those foods are eaten in their own region.

But what stayed with me most was not the food stalls, but what was happening beyond the festival grounds.

On Sunday, along the streets away from the main venue, I noticed even shops normally closed were open. Some held sales, while others created special products for the event. Gelaterie teamed up with bakeries, and piadina shops with cheese shops, creating special menus together. Each business took part in the festival in its own way.

At a perfume shop, there was a game where visitors had to guess different food-related scents: lemon, vanilla, pistachio, banana and rice. Even in perfumery, there are so many connections to food.

When I spoke to a member of staff, she enthusiastically told me, ‘I love it!’, sharing her feelings about the festival. Food, she explained, is part of the region’s culture and is connected to their work, too. I got the impression that, for her, it felt natural for a perfume shop to take part in a food festival.

Around this region, I often notice shop doors covered in stickers from other local businesses and community events. Somehow, they have become a hallmark of a ‘good shop’.

Looking at those stickers, I started imagining the different local activities each shop supports. In Bra, the home of Slow Food, people may look not only to recognisable labels, certifications and ratings when choosing a shop, but also to these everyday connections as signs of trust. Recently, I have met two people who first visited a shop as customers, fell in love with it, and eventually started working there and decided to stay in Bra. Someone who once came to eat becomes the person welcoming others. An encounter with a shop can even influence where someone chooses to work and which town they decide to call home. What makes a ‘good shop’ means different things to different people. But to me, the fact that there are people who want to remain part of a place in this way says something about what makes it special.

In addition to its regular market, Bra hosts antiques and local producers markets. During summer, the town also comes alive with aperitivo events every Friday. I wonder whether the connections between businesses I saw at BRA’S have grown through these everyday activities. Familiar streets and shopfronts become part of the festival, and people wander from place to place, enjoying what they find. Even without a ticket to the main square, you can enjoy the music and the atmosphere. You can stop for something to eat, pop into a shop, or simply walk around and still feel part of the festival. Everyday public spaces became places where strangers shared the same moment. 

On the other hand, I heard a local resident say, ‘That event is meant to bring people in from outside Bra and get them to try Salsiccia di Bra’. To me, it seemed like a festival that the whole town could enjoy. But those words suggested that some locals saw it less as an event for the community and more as one aimed at visitors. Even when walking along the same streets, I notice different things from someone who has lived in Bra for many years. I also heard someone say, ‘There aren't many places where everyone can get together on a regular basis.’ There used to be a place where students could gather to study and people of all ages could drop in for a casual lunch. But it closed, and opportunities to spend time together in places like that have become fewer.

Hearing those words in a town so full of people on festival days stayed with me. There are people who fall in love with a shop and decide to stay in Bra. At the same time, I heard people talk about losing the everyday places where they could regularly meet others. On a day when the whole town became a festival, I was enjoying myself as an outsider, rediscovering what makes Bra special. But the connections between this town and its people continue long after the festival is over. There is the question of what makes visitors want to come back, and whether people who live here have places they want to visit today. I found myself wanting to look at Bra from both perspectives.

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