A Murder Mistery Dinner

From the Parma Home Restaurant Festival, second edition

by Marco Valesi

"Your name is Joao, you are a twehnty years old Brazilian dancer. You speak four languages ​​and you are intimately tied to a lot, too many people of the Bagatti Valsecchi family. Count Ercole Bagatti Valsecchi is dead and you're, like everyone else, among the suspects. Be careful and stay around". That 's what I' was told Saturday, May 21 in a charming and refined house of the center of Parma (for contacts marta.bertora@tiscali.it) which opened within the second edition of Parma Home Restaurant Festival in Unusual Events & Locations section, to 25 unknown guests for a Murder Mistery Dinner.

Everyone becomes the character of the murder mistery... at least for dinner!

After the initial bewilderment I try to put myself in the part and start watching all those special guests with curiosity and also a little bit of suspicion. Two excellent actresses, playing the Commissioner and the butler, 24 other guests, a rich appetizer, two dishes (rice au gratin, beef silverside with anchovies and capers mint sauce), a lick one's chops chocalate mousse, diamonds, an earring, a rose petal, are the elements of a magic sensorial experience, where everyone becomes the character of the murder mistery... at least for dinner!

Between courses and the new tablemates are questioning each other trying to learn about aspects of life, linked to the scenic representation but also to reality (I became “a very good friend” of Esmeralda and Esperanza, ruthless lover and grandson of the Count durin the dinner; Maria and Roberta in everyday life), and solve the mystery in the game, in a crescendo of intensity and interaction.

Everyone was enthusiastic about the idea proposed by the Parma Home Restaurant Festival to open houses, bars-cafes' and unusual spaces (museums, cheese factories, wine cellars, ham factories, art galleries, spaces for co-working) and fascinated to become actor, a sort of novel Sherlock Holmes or Commissioner Montalbano. The organizer of Festival (ready for the third edition of this unique and fast growing Festival that will be in October 2016), Marta, the welcoming chef, and the dinner participants were happy to become the real stars of the evening getting and providing fantastic socializing moments, fanciful food and intelligent elements for the development of the investigation and found that everybody was a secret ingredient of a literally spectacular dinner!

Taste & Knowledge

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