TURIN (TORINO), A SIMPOSIO COOKBOOK

Chocolate. Vermouth. History. Turin.

Welcome to Torino, Turin, the city at the heart of Italy’s Risorgimento, the reign of gianduiotti and vermouth, and one of Italy’s great café cultures.

This is the city where aristocracy met — and sometimes collided with — the emerging bourgeoisie.

A city of arcades, elegant cafés, tailors, lawyers, revolutionaries, chocolatiers, politicians, unconventional women, and more than a few stories of magic.

In this Simposio, we sit at one of Torino’s café tables with a hot chocolate or a glass of local Vermouth and begin to look around.

The Risorgimento.

The Futurist movement.

Cavour and the Countess of Castiglione.

Lidia Poët.

The Valdesi.

Ribbons, hats, tramezzini, chocolate, cocktails, legends — and, naturally, food.

This is not just a cookbook about Turin.

It is an invitation to understand the city through what it ate, drank, invented, debated, wore, believed, and celebrated.

STEP INSIDE THE BOOK

Before you decide, step inside.

Here are a few pages from Torino Simposio: a glimpse of Turin’s food, history, characters, rituals, and wonderfully elegant contradictions.

INSIDE THIS VOLUME

  • Traditional Piedmontese and Turinese recipes, from Vitello Tonnato and Bollito Misto to Gianduia and Bicerin
  • The story of Turin’s extraordinary chocolate tradition
  • Vermouth: its origins, rituals, cocktails, and place in the city’s culture
  • The Risorgimento, Cavour, the House of Savoy, and the people who helped shape modern Italy
  • Women and unconventional figures, from the Countess of Castiglione to Lidia Poët
  • Turin’s cafés, fashion, tramezzini, Futurism, religious minorities, legends, and magic
  • Photography and stories that turn recipes into a portrait of the city

A TASTE OF WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

  • Vitello Tonnato, one of Piedmont’s most famous dishes
  • Bollito Misto, and the sauces that traditionally accompany it
  • Gianduia, Gianduiotti, Torta Gianduia, and Turin’s extraordinary relationship with chocolate
  • Bicerin, the layered coffee, chocolate, and cream drink born in Turin
  • Vermouth di Torino, from its history to the rituals and cocktails built around it
  • Cavour and the Risorgimento, when cafés became places to exchange political ideas as well as drinks
  • The Countess of Castiglione, fashion, photography, and nineteenth-century intrigue
  • Lidia Poët, the pioneering woman whose legal career challenged the conventions of her time
  • The birth of the tramezzino and Turin’s café culture
  • Futurism, food rebellions, and visions 
  • Turin’s famous relationship with black and white magic

A CITY BUILT AROUND CAFÉS

If you think of Turin, you think of chocolate, arcades, Vermouth, cafés, the bourgeoisie, the Risorgimento, Italy’s unification, and the House of Savoy.

And many of these stories meet in the same place: the café.

Turin’s historic cafés were not simply places to drink something warm.

Noblemen, thinkers, artists, politicians, and the emerging middle class met there, exchanged ideas, argued, flirted, planned, and observed each other.

History unfolded between tiny cups, glasses of Vermouth, chocolate, pastries, newspapers, and conversation.

Perhaps that is why Torino feels so appropriate for a Simposio.

You sit down.

You eat.

You drink.

And slowly the city begins to tell you its stories.

CHOCOLATE, VERMOUTH, AND INVENTION

Few cities have turned food and drink into identity quite like Turin.

Chocolate became an industry, an art, and eventually part of the city’s mythology.

Gianduia transformed hazelnuts and cocoa into one of Piedmont’s most recognizable flavors.

Bicerin layered coffee, chocolate, and cream into a drink that still belongs unmistakably to Turin.

And Vermouth — aromatized wine infused with herbs and spices — became inseparable from the elegant cafés and aperitivo culture of the city.

But Turin rarely stops at tradition.

It invents.

It experiments.

It rebels.

Even its food eventually collided with Futurism and the desire to imagine an entirely new way of eating.

THE TURIN BEHIND THE FOOD

This book is also about the people who inhabited this world.

Politicians and aristocrats.

Women who refused the roles assigned to them.

Religious communities.

Revolutionaries.

Artists.

Lawyers.

Visionaries.

You’ll move from Cavour to the Countess of Castiglione, from Lidia Poët to the Valdesi, from nineteenth-century fashion to Futurist rebellion.

And then, because this is Turin, sooner or later someone will whisper about magic.

Black or white?

You’ll have to decide.

WELCOME TO TORINO

Pronti?

Wear a ribboned or tall hat and a long velvety skirt or tailor-made trousers.

Take a tiny lace umbrella or a walking stick with you.

Walk straight, chin up, and gracefully.

Torino is waiting to welcome you with its elegance, never-buried traditions, cafés, stories — and a sea of chocolate.

Benvenuti a Torino.

Claudia

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