It’s a familiar scene—ceramic plates and pasta bowls framed with silverware and glasses line long tables in a yellow cafeteria-like room. Dotting the midline of the table are pitchers of water and wine, baskets of bread for the inevitable scarpetta, and vases of olive oil and balsamic vinegar (we are near Modena after all). Chatter between the guests and those who serve them fills the air. It’s lunchtime in Bologna, but we’re not in one of the many restaurants that’s makes Bologna a dining destination. We’re in one of the city’s four Cucine Popolari where all of the servers, cooks, and dishwashers are volunteers, and everyone eating is in need. 

Directly translated into English, this is a community kitchen; for a truer translation, we’ll need a deeper context on the history of left-wing politics and hearty gastronomy in one Italian city. 

In March of 2025, the city of Bologna inscribed an ius cibi in its municipal statute; an official recognition of “the right to adequate and safe food, as a fundamental, permanent, and unrestricted right, regardless of socioeconomic status or cultural background (food citizenship), acknowledging its essential cultural value” per a press release issued by the municipality. 

Dr. Andrea Segrè, a mayoral adviser for food policy and University of Bologna professor who helped draft the law, recognizes that while the amendment is a significant first step, it requires action. 

“A series of local food policies should render this right enforceable for all,” he says, emphasizing that he’s referring to an ideal, not the reality. “This is the struggle, this is the context, this is the frame.” 

There have been a handful of successful city-led initiatives like “Un Piatto per Tutti e Tutte,” a program by the “Dare per Fare” Community Fund of the Metropolitan City of Bologna aiming to recover food waste and feed those in need. According to a 2025 progress report, the network reached 20,900 people, approximately 36% of whom were minors. But there are still shortcomings. 

“What is really missing,” Dr. Segrè says, “is government intervention on poverty.”

Until the city manages to create better living and working conditions for its inhabitants, curbing poverty before it causes food insecurity, Cucine Popolari and other third-sector organizations must feed the city themselves. 

Bologna has boasted “economic,” “public,” or “popular” kitchens since the early 19th century. Under the reign of Napoleon, volunteer-run organizations, often church-affiliated, distributed meals to the poor. At the start of the 20th century, Bologna elected its first socialist mayor, Francesco Zanardi, who overhauled food policy in response to the economic turmoil of World War I. His leadership spearheaded the construction of a public bakery, restaurant, and cafe, and city-run grocery stores. He was called the “mayor of bread,” and since his epoch, the Left has dominated city politics. This, as Dr. Segrè says, is the struggle, context, and frame in which Cucine Popolari operates. 

When I arrive at the Battiferro location earlier that morning, I’m put to work without question. An extra set of hands is highly valuable around here and my reporting becomes more active than passive. Although we’re hours away from when the guests will arrive (those who come for a meal are always referred to as guests), Valeria Gabuso, an aunt in retirement with wide eyes and a pinched smile, passes the morning in a frenzy. She calls out tasks in little shrieks and frets: “We need to set the tables! We need to clean the trays! We need to assemble the sandwiches!” 

The last task does not go smoothly. We’re making sandwiches of donated hamburger buns and the European Union commodity brand of gianduia, a Piedmontese chocolate-hazelnut spread. The nostalgia-inducing, saccharine paste is too dry, clumping in globs and sending flurries of bread crumbs to fall onto the cutting board like the first snow of the season. 

In a rare moment when she has time to answer my questions, Valeria tells me that she volunteers with Cucine Popolari twice a week, which really means four days since she always spends the day after recuperating. Across the four kitchens, Cucine Popolari estimates it will serve 650 meals today alone.

Through two doors is the industrial kitchen. A swarm of volunteers haunt vats of tomato sauce, attentively chop vegetables, and hold packages up to the ceiling light, checking for expiration dates and cross-checking them with a poster displaying an Italian law aimed at combatting food waste. According to the city’s 2024 Spreco Zero campaign, Bologna generates 10,735 tons of food waste per year. In 2016, with guidance from the European Union, Italy passed new rules and incentives for donating food to third-sector organizations with the aim of  “social solidarity and the limitation of waste.” 

The combination of thrift and luxury confounds me. The tomato sauce simmering will be served with handmade tortellini, perhaps the definitive pasta shape of Bologna, traditionally served in brodo. Among the donated food for the volunteers are bread, croissants, and fine pastries from some of the city’s best bakeries. Chef Ermias Abraha is making a dessert out of panettone, a traditional Italian Christmas cake, even though it’s mid-January when I visit. The meal begets even more than the usual mystique, craft, and awe with which an American, like me, would view Italian food.

As they cook, the volunteers throw remarks, insights, or teases from their stations as if trying to reach the bubbling pot in the middle. They discuss politics in Bologna and the context in which these public kitchens operate. Chef Daniele Ruiba reminds me of the city’s left leanings. Another volunteer, Cinzia Busi, chimes in with the historical and present influence of the Communist Party.

“The progressive part of the population has brought empathy: we help,” Chef Daniele says. “It’s in the DNA of the Left.” 

“But also on the street,” Cinzia adds. “You come across someone, you stop, you help them up; we’re like that.”

I can’t quite wrap my head around the combination of thrift and luxury going into this communal lunch. In addition to the chocolate-hazelnut-hamburger-bun sandwiches, chef Ermias Abraha is making a dessert out of panettone, a traditional Italian Christmas cake. (It is mid-January when I visit, and the cakes are not yet expired.) The head chef Antonio Villani is simmering the tomato sauce, which will go over handmade tortellini, the typical Bolognese pasta. Among the donated food to be given to the volunteers are bread, croissants, and fine pastries from some of the city’s best bakeries. The meal begets even more than the usual mystique, craft, and awe with which an American would view Italian food.

“Well,” says chef Daniele Ruiba, coming up with an answer, “I don’t want to slip into politics.” Then he pauses. “Let’s slip into politics! Bologna is on the left wing.”

“Red!” chirps Cinzia Busi. (She is referring to the historical and present influence of the Communist Party.)

Chef Daniele continues: “The progressive part of the population has brought empathy: we help. It’s in the DNA of the left.”

“But also on the street,” Cinzia adds. You come across someone, you stop, you help them up; we’re like that.”

“And the Catholics!,” the chef declares. Which prompts Francesca Longhi, who donates food to her local church, to add that the vocation to help the poor is found there, too.

The head chef Antonio Villani pulls away to prepare a lasagna. He thinks the city is “very open” and “very tender.”

There’s a quote enshrined and illuminated above a nearby bridge: “We are for the entire and absolute freedom of all.” Ermias adds, “and that sums up some of the philosophy of Bologna.”

Chef Daniele references the word libertas on the city’s coat of arms; Bologna abolished slavery in 1265. 

“In the United States, when was slavery abolished?” Ermias asks me. 

Roberto Morgantini, the founder of Cucine Popolari, enters and responds, “It’s not over.” 

When he enters the dining room, a chorus of loving greetings meets him: “Ciao caro! Ciao carissimo!” Roberto has a mythic, fairy-tale air about him. He’s 78 years old with long, white hair that encircles kind, altruistic eyes and rounds out a long, white beard, the image of a Santa Claus in which you’d want to believe. 

Roberto grew up in an industrial mountain town in Piedmont with fewer than 7,000 residents. His father was a Partisan during World War II; his mother a courier for the same anti-fascist uprising. When the war ended, Italians from the South migrated north in search of jobs. That’s when Roberto remembers seeing the plight of hunger firsthand. 

A lifelong unionist and a man of nonprofits, Roberto founded the kitchen in 2015 with the intention to provide meals for the elderly, needy, and lonely—inspired by “the mayor of bread” before him. Even though he’s retired, he remains heavily involved today: making afterschool snacks for school children and babysitting kids of immigrant mothers while they attend free Italian language courses. 

To this day, Cucine Popolari is secular, does not receive government funding, and is political in its own right. 

“We occupy a vacuum created by the state,” Roberto explains, echoing Dr. Segrè. His goal is that, one day, they won’t need volunteers—that the state would bear the financial responsibility instead. Or better yet, that “everyone has a job, everyone has opportunity.”

He presents the obvious contradiction to himself: “If it’s the duty of the state, why do you do it?” But he answers his own question quickly: the people would be worse off without. 

“If food is a right,” Roberto says, “someone must see to it that this right is satisfied.” 

During lunchtime, the tables are set with ceramic plateware, stainless silverware, proper glassware, and paper menus for guests to choose from. Beyond a plate of food, Cucine Popolari also pointedly addresses the guests’ need for dignity. This is the difference between charity and solidarity, as Roberto sees it. A charity “gives,” while his kitchens “give back.” The Italian verb he uses implies the guests already have the right to something; it just needs to be affirmed. 

“Poverty is like an illness,” Roberto says. It’s a deprivation, and not always in terms of money. There are workers who frequent the kitchens because of low paychecks. There are old people who come because they are lonely and poor in the sense of community. Roberto never blames the guests.

Heard above the dining room’s murmur, a guest sings in his seat, leaning backwards in his chair with his mouth open to the ceiling. A volunteer named Teresa Abbattista buses plates stained with tomato sauce and passes the songster. She reacts with a smile that gives way to an eye roll when she meets my gaze. 

“One needs to laugh or else they argue,” she says to me, shrugging off the interaction. “It takes a lot of patience.” 

In Teresa’s aplomb, the reality of poverty and its symptoms, despite the positive outlook of the volunteers, becomes clear. Some guests are kind; others are rowdy or rude. Some struggle with substance abuse; others with mental health issues. All, however, are in need: of a meal, a place to dine in company, and some groceries to take home. 

“Politics must set examples,” Roberto says, watching over the dining room, “which are not just words but examples of concrete things that you do; not theorizing poverty, but putting something into practice.” 

He believes that what’s happening in this room is its own kind of politics. I ask if he has any intention to run for office. He chuckles and says no. Volunteerism is rooted in egoism, he tells me, “a need that we all have, a slice of solidarity, to say, ‘what can I do for another person?’”

Even with an English translation, the food metaphor remains.