Barilla Pasta World Championship: Carolina Diaz wins the 2018 edition.
Eighteen chefs under 35 coming from 17 different countries competed to win the title of Master of Pasta during the seventh edition of the Barilla Pasta World Championship that took place on 24 and 25 October 2018. La Pelota in Milan was the venue of two days of meetings, talks and challenges dedicated to pasta, seen through a global lens. The audience of more than 450 people included food lovers, press, influencers and industry professionals.
With the theme “Eat Positive”, the event offered a unique vision on the key role of pasta in a balanced diet, the characterising element of the so called Italian “Dolce Vita”. All this dressed with live cooking demos, tastings and conferences on food health and sustainability following a “field to fork” approach.
For Barilla the Pasta World Championship is an opportunity to promote its philosophy aimed at encouraging the new generation of talented chefs to express themselves through pasta, inspiring foodies worldwide to eat positive and healthy.
The winner of the 2018 edition was the American Carolina Diaz who, with her “Revisited Spaghetto al pomodoro”, conquered a jury made up of Michelin star chefs Lorenzo Cogo, Viviana Varese, Luigi Taglienti and Holger Stromberg together with US photographer Brittany Wright.
Chef Davide Oldani, deep thinker of Italian cuisine and Barilla brand ambassador, joined the final challenge, but he was also the protagonist of the live cooking performance of the Food Ensemble: a duo of chefs/musicians who talks about cuisine through the alternative language of sounds in a sensory journey of taste, sight and hearing.
John Dickie, historian, academic and British writer of best-sellers, and Francesca Romana Barberini, TV writer and presenter, hosted the event. Furthermore Jozef Youssef, co-founder of the Kitchen Theory, Filippa Lagerbäck, Swedish TV presenter and ex-model, and Giuseppe Bonati, basil grower, took part in the event as speakers.
Carolina Diaz, Chef de cuisine of the “Terzo Piano” Restaurant at the Art Institute of Chicago, was the first woman in seven editions to win the title of Master of Pasta. After two days of tough cooking competitions, in the final against Toby Wang, the young Chinese Executive Chef of the Beijng Hilton, Carolina won the title of Master of Pasta 2018 with her Revisited Spaghetto al Pomodoro: a concentrate of taste and simplicity combined with creativity and a personal touch, which did not distort the concept of pasta, but instead pampered it with a Mediterranean touch.