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“Focus on your true strength and find a niche. Don’t do it for the fame or your ego but for the matter. Convey value, ideally timeless value. Know what you’re writing about and don’t ever be seduced to become superficial or careless because the internet is quick and trashy. Be tyrannical when it comes to detail. And then: keep posting.”

Splendido Magazine, why did you start?!

Mercedes is mainly a writer, Juri is mainly a photographer. But for Splendido we switch roles all the time – sometimes Mercedes is behind the camera and Juri writes, and the next day it is the other way around. We are used to working together for years now and thats because we got to know each other while working together as freelancers for newspapers and magazines. But Juri started the blog that later became Splendido on his own at first, that was in 2015. He has always been a great cook and just started writing down what he was cooking. Since Mercedes loves cooking too and we both enjoyed cooking and eating together from the moment we first met, she got envious of his blog pretty quickly and was allowed to join. Eventually we decided to focus our magazine on Italian cuisine. Not only because it is the one cooking style we prefer and always come back to. Also it is a food culture with an almost infinite amount of local traditions, recipes and specialties to explore. Plus we have an apartment in Lombardy, Northern Italy, where we live up to about six months a year and travel a lot throughout Italy to learn more about Italian food and to find great spots to eat and shop local specialties. Pretty quickly we saw the interest for the blog grow bigger and decided to professionalize it.

How did you start and what kind of work/preparation behind Splendido?

After we decided to professionalize Splendido in 2017, we hired an agency to help us with the visual concept and the programming of a website that resembles no longer a blog but a profound magazine with a look and feel that fitted our needs and intentions. The new website went online in the end of 2018 and immediately it was well worth the hard work and money that went into it. The website is growing steadily since and by now it really became a job rather than being a nice hobby. We put a lot of work into the content of our website and work constantly on growing our audience. But it is still worth every minute of it, because a) we get to cook, eat and travel a lot and b) there is no better feeling in the world than being a creator and work on the behalf of your own business.

What’s so special in it?

A lot of people tell us they love not only our photos and recipes, but especially our writing. We try to write from a very personal perspective and we don’t just give instructions on how to cook something but always tell a little back story about a recipe too. Be it some witty or funny thought about life and cooking or some interesting fact about Italian food. Also we rarely give exact quantities in a recipe but rather encourage the reader to trust his own gut and develop his own sense and intuition for tasting and quantities.

We love the Italian principle of „quanto basta“, which means: no one can tell you how much of an ingredient you really need because you have to feel and taste for yourself whether its enough salt / flour / egg for your taste and also for the circumstances you’re working in.

How do you get inspired?

We travel a lot, read a lot, talk to people. Especially while on the road and when eating out in restaurants or visiting farmers. One of our favorite things to do is also to go for huge walks in a city like for example Milan and look at every single restaurant menu in the streets. Thats when we always come up with new recipe ideas or simply ideas for new combinations of ingredients. But inspiration can really hit you anywhere. We just launched our fashion collection (shop.splendido-magazin.de, we also ship to Italy), and therefore we collected photographs of Italian typography in the streets which we now worked with to design T-Shirts and Caps.

Where does your passion come from?

Good question. I guess we have both always loved food, loved Italy, loved traveling and look at the world and learn about traditions, cultures, design and daily human life in general, but also loved being artists and follow our talents in the fields of writing and photography. We have always been searching for some platform to combine all of these things in a fruitful and focused way so that it could also become an independent business and source of income for us.

Difficulties you had to face and goals.

The goal is definitely to grow and to be able to keep exploring Italy as well as our own capacities. We have a lot of plans for the future, our fashion collection was only the beginning.

Suggestions/advices to someone who wants to start a blog?

Focus on your true strength and find a niche. Don’t do it for the fame or your ego but for the matter. Convey value, ideally timeless value. Know what you’re writing about and don’t ever be seduced to become superficial or careless because the internet is quick and trashy. Be tyrannical when it comes to detail. And then: keep posting.

Projects for the future?

Many.

Follow Mercedes and Juri here but also in FB and Instagram

Riccardo Cortese comes from Maddaloni, Campania, in the South of Italy, the Land of Pizza. He studied Public Relations in Milan and he is amused by the act of giving life to projects like start-ups in different fields, especially food service. Currently he is CONFAPI youth President (an association of small and medium sized businesses) in his territory. He is also a national web marketing CONFAPI representative. His associate partner is Federico Pinna, a Sardinian young man who studied Economy and Marketing. Likewise his specialization lies in the field of start-ups, more specifically regarding Marketing and Communication projects, and he is also founder and partner of “Milano Food Week”, the Milan Week dedicated to food and wine.

How did you get the idea to open this kind of restaurant and why have you decided to do it?

The passion for good cooking and food service have always fascinated us and we always mixed them in/with our projects. Foodation is a multi-brand holding that includes all the different formats of our firm: Mariù – culinary kebabberia, Macinata – Sarti di burger, Burbee – Artisanal Burger & Beers and the last born, Briscola – Pizza Society.

All the premises belong to the typology of fast or casual dining.

Mariù is the result of an attempt and desire to bring closer a broader female public to the Kebab – World, also due to the introduction of a menu – that allows to create a customise kebab with many different and genuine ingredients that come from the best of the Italian tradition (for example, the Puccia Salentina – a typical regional bread, Burrata cheese, Pecorino cheese, crema di tartufo – truffle cream).

Macinata is the “Hamburgeria – Burger House” where “customization” finds its best application: the bread, the type of meat, the size and the way to cook the latter, and every single additional ingredient are choosen by the customer, whom imagination can run free while inventing his own high quality personalized burger .

Burbee is the only format created for franchising projects and agreements. An “hamburgeria” that reflects a street mood: it offers burgers and handcrafted beers thanks to a series of recipes strongly inspired by the original hamburger and its native land: USA.

Briscola is a pizzeria enhanced by the best Neapolitan tradition, where the main ingredients are (San Marzano DOP tomatoes and Campanian Fiordilatte) associated with a winning spirit, a location with a captivating contemporary design and where the healthiness of the product is exalted. To offer a flawless product is essential; this goal is attainable by using wholewheat dough for pizza and a special care while cooking it in a daily kept clean oven.

What is the main idea of it and what goals you would like to reach?

Foodation is born to meet the new demands of the Italian and international public. Further to our travels abroad we realized that – at least in the big cities – the clients want to eat more quickly compared to the past. Foodation aims to create and manage this type of format at an affordable price without sacrificing the quality of your product and a pleasant environment.
The goal is to be able to spread our quality format through the Italian territory and abroad.

How long it took to organize all? Did anyone help you?

The first format was developed in 2012: Trita. This model, innovative and highly successful, was followed in 2013 by Burbee – artisanal burger&beer. In 2014, the Food Lovers Invest (throttle start up WithFounders) and some business angels invested in Foodation with the aim of contributing to the growth with new openings, also in Milan: thus the first points of sale format Mariù (September 2014), Minced (October 2014) and Trump (February 2015 ).

Why do you think that it is so important- successful the integration of cultures and this reinterpretation of the food?

Food is no longer just the answer to a basic need but it’s also a cultural factor able to leverage on the memories and desires. Going out for dinner, or lunch break, can be a kind of trip, it is certainly an experience, a daily discovery and re- discovery parenthesis.

We are observing, in the last years, a strong emerging trend for the Italian food: Eataly probably is affirming his supremacy and is riding this wave ( defining quality, sustainability, real “Made in Italy”). Do you feel that you are also taking advantages of it, but in a different way?

The stores of Eataly in the world are almost the embassies of Italian soft power abroad regarding the sector of food and wine. Certainly Eataly realized before others the power inherent in the Made in Italy, but it is also true that it is worthily represented abroad.

Next projects – new ideas

For now, after the opening of the three formats that we wanted to create, we are focusing on new openings abroad, for us this is the biggest challenge.

What kind of message do you want to share with your customers through Mariù?

The kebab can be absolutely genuine and unexpectedly refined! Seeing is believing.

What would you like to suggest to young men- women who have a dream and would like to accomplish it?

Preparation is the key, but even more important is the work and the life experience that allows to know the context in which you want to create your own projects.

Mariù

All photos are property of Foodation srl.

Donatella

Déshabillé Magazine

Archivi tag: food

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