Italy tour with tastebuds

HOSPITALITY students at St John’s Regional College experienced the true taste of Italy with a three-week tour through Venice, Florence and Rome as part of an educational exchange program.
The school’s Vocational Education and Training Hospitality department has recently formed ties with Venetian hospitality college Istituto Statale di Istruzione Superiore.
The college, run by Andrea Barbarigo and Paolo Sarpi, has a tourism and hospitality focus to the equivalent of a diploma level.
Students were taken to traditional Italian eateries where they sampled true Italian foods including homemade gelati.
Chef and hospitality trainer Nick Weiler accompanied the students and one of the St John’s team’s tasks was to prepare a five course menu for 50 selected guest at Barbarigo’s college restaurant.
In Florence, the St John’s hospitality crew learned about the Italian attention to detail when shopping for meats.
Poultry, for example, was not limited to chicken and its various cuts.
In Florence, it was a matter of cockerel or hen, poussin or poularde, for soup, or the full fleshed yellow corn-fed roasting chicken.
Students encountered a variety of well-aged beef, offal, game meats, even horse meat and game birds, and a never ending assortment of small goods, cheeses, pickles and preserves, and the famous wild Porcini mushrooms.
The Rome leg of the tour was dedicated to sight-seeing and later this year St John’s Regional College is hoping to host an Italian delegation as part of the exchange.