On a fine day in mid-June I am sitting in Carlo Petrini's large, bright office overlooking the courtyard of Boccondivino, an osteria in the Piedmontese city of Bra, headquarters of Slow Food. I'm here to talk to the man who is not only the founder of Slow Food and the University of Gastronomic Sciences, but also the president of UNISG's board of directors.

JC: Tell me about the relationship between the university and Slow Food.

CP: The idea of the university was to give dignity to gastronomy as an academic subject. To do that we had to develop a different concept of gastronomy, that of a complete science—complete, complex, and multi-disciplinary. Unfortunately over the last hundred years, gastronomy has been conceived as a very narrow subject, focusing on restaurants, chefs, cooking programs, the Michelin Guide, and all the food writing and fashions. For me, that is a narrow concept of gastronomy, and we wanted to move away from it. So we needed a university as a place that would give recognition to gastronomy and go much deeper than the ideas that were there before it. The relationship between the university and Slow Food is strong because Slow Food built the university and the university is the realization of our idea of gastronomy.

JC: Why two programs? Why two different locations?

CP: We were lucky to have two great supporters, the regions of Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna, and two opportunities [for facilities], one a very prestigious place, the Reggio di Colorno, and the other in Pollenzo, also a very nice building.

JC: Is there anything you'd like to say to the UNISG students directly?

CP: I hope that the university creates a very strong network of alumni, a network that connects to the entire world. In ten years, there will be more than 2000 alumni, seeds that spread around the world, not necessarily Slow Food ideas, but this new concept of gastronomy. And I hope that the friendships between the students will get stronger and stronger and that this relationship and friendship will remain in their lives, and that a piece of their hearts will stay with Slow Food and Terra Madre. The values of Terra Madre are around emotional intelligence, not cold, sterile intelligence. Emotional intelligence and also anarchy, these are the two columns that make the movement stay alive.

I glance around Petrini's dark wood desk, littered with papers, and to a bookshelf against the wall, well stocked with many varieties of snails—wooden, glass, ceramic—gifts from many years.

JC: A number of professors remarked that this year's students don't seem as attached to the Slow Food ideas, the manifesto.

CP: We have to create a network where there is still autonomy and independence. We don't need to force people to follow the ideas. We want to give people enough information to build their own concept of gastronomy and pursue their own ideas in their own home country. That's why it's very important, the concept of emotional intelligence, because we don't want to fall into a very hierarchical organization that loses the freedom and the autonomy of countries, and the way they express their gastronomic context and gastronomic values.

After working on the cellophane wrapper of a tin of artisanal cookies for a few minutes, Petrini opens the tin and, with a glance at the clock, offers me one.

CP: Ah! Just as if you were coming to England, Queen Elizabeth would give you a cookie at five o'clock in the afternoon.