Flavours from Crotone and Corfu with Chef Gaetano Nikoletta at Marina΄s Tavernaki

Gaetano Nicoletta from Le Stanze restaurant in Crotone has worked with with some of the best chefs and pastry chefs in Italy (Gianluca Fusto, Luca Montersino, Ernest Knam, Caterina Ceraudo) and took part in the first MedTaste (2017) organised by the Marco Polo System along with the Corfu chef Marina Beska.

Gaetano and Marina collaborated for the first time in 2017 in the MedTaste project organised by the European group Marco Polo System from Venice. The group's representative Alberto Cotrona has worked with Corfu on several occasions over the last few years in the fields of culture and tourism.

Gaetano and Marina met up again for the Corfu Food and Wine Festival. They bought produce together in the open-air market and then prepared a menu combining the traditional cuisine of Crotone and Corfu which have common roots. Chef Gaetano enjoyed the warm welcome he received here and said he would go back with inspiration and love to continue his work in a region of southern Italy which is facing economic problems.

Amongst those present at the event were Deputy Mayor for Tourism Vasilis Kavadias, Corfu Inspectorate of Antiquities Director Tenia Rigakou and Mayoral candidate Chrysanthos Sarlis.

Crotone - "Before the Odyssey - Today"

In mythology Corfu and Crotone are twin cities. Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians and renowned for his hospitality and good governance, was the brother of the hero Crotone - the eponymous founder of the town in Calabria in Southern Italy. The two towns have also been linked gastronomically since ancient times when in the Odyssey the island of the Phaeacians was known for its grand banquets and hospitality to strangers.

The symposio organised for Odysseus gives us the first work of written literature in the West and it is there that Odysseus' true identity is discovered. At the same time in Cotrone Pythagoras and his school, founded on the Italian coast of the Ionian Sea, taught the significance of food and connected diet with philosophy. The Nafpaktos naval battle saw the two towns coming up against each other as rival factions and various incidents in the Italian Risorgimento also link the two coastal areas (e.g. the Bandiera brothers who were put up at the "Doctors' House" in Corfu).

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