Niccolò Moronato
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Trattoria Guaiana

Part of Guaiana Toscana | Video Overview of Guaiana Toscana’s Research

Discover recipes, upcoming residencies and table at TrattoriaGuaiana.org

Trattoria Guaiana (2022/ongoing) is a post-traditional, participatory dining space that materializes Guaiana Toscana’s research in the present, transforming forgotten histories into a living, collective practice. While Guaiana Toscana critically reflects on the 1608 Medici attempt to colonize the Amazon in present-day French Guiana and the six Tupì people who were brought to Florence and left stranded when the expedition was abandoned, Trattoria Guaiana confronts these histories of erasure and invisibility in contemporary Italian society. It actively challenges dominant historical narratives by integrating these stories into a wider conversation on how we define Italian identity today.

Through food, Trattoria Guaiana actively inverts expectations: familiar ingredients like corn, eggplant, and tomato are re-imagined through the knowledge and practices of diasporic and custodian communities, while ingredients often considered “exotic,” such as plantain and cassava, are prepared through Italian culinary techniques, making them feel both fresh and familiar. This process, both conceptual and physical, alienizes the familiar and familiarizes the alien, dismantling established boundaries and conventions in the way ingredients, food, and culture are narrated.

At the heart of Trattoria Guaiana lies an open archive of recipe-traces—living documents and artifacts that bear witness to histories of longing, passage, adaptation, and exchange. These recipes are not simply about food; they are stories — stories of migration, transformation, and survival — that trace the cornered voices of diasporic and custodian communities. The project, by making these traces accessible and alive, aims to reconstruct these lost connections, creating a collective space for reflection and engagement.

“I experience it as a short circuit between familiarity and strangeness.
An experiential dismantling of the boundaries between ‘exotic’ and ‘typical’.”
— Niccolò Moronato

Through installations, soundscapes, photographs, books, and objects, this archive transforms into a sensory experience, inviting people to re-engage with the past as part of a larger, ongoing process of cultural recovery and revitalization.

Beyond its physical space, Trattoria Guaiana engages visitors through a dynamic series of events — dinners, walks, cooking sessions, market trips, screenings, talks, readings, workshops, and personal connections with people at markets and diners. Each of these interactions trains the eye and the senses to recognize the complexities of social structures and how divisions based on class, nationality, and cultural identity shape our understanding of the world. By blurring the lines between what is considered familiar and foreign, Trattoria Guaiana invites participants to engage critically with these structures, opening up space for dialogue, exchange, and new possibilities for belonging.

Through the integration of marginalized voices and contributions from diasporic and migrant communities, Trattoria Guaiana creates a new relational language. It reshapes the dominant narratives around Italian identity, questioning historical exclusions and offering a vision of cultural transformation and re-definition. By actively taking part in reconstructing overlooked histories, Trattoria Guaiana transforms them into a tool for rethinking and reshaping Italian culture today.

Trattoria Guaiana is an evolving process of deconstruction and redefinition. By using food as a vehicle for reflection, it continues to question the established narratives of Italian identity, engaging with complexity, curiosity, and experimentation to create new cultural connections that forge pathways toward a more self-conscious society. It was initiated by Niccolò Moronato, Alice Jasmine Crippa, and Prince Asford and it is open to cook, learn, and explore with everyone who wishes to join.

Read the curatorial text by Mistura Allison below, developed for Trattoria Guaiana’s debut at Villa Romana.

Public programming at Villa Romana, Florence, 2024.