Slow Food, Fast Cars: Casa Maria Luigia

Welcome to Casa Maria Luigia, Massimo Bottura and Lara Gilmore’s idyllic guest house in the Italian countryside

Lara Gilmore and Massimo Bottura - the renowned chef behind three-Michelin-starred restaurant Osteria Francescana - designed Casa Maria Luigia to celebrate the hospitality and wonderful, earthy cuisine of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region.

Their one-of-a-kind guest house boasts not only exquisite food, but gorgeous interiors filled with contemporary art, unique design objects, and an impressive collection of Italian cars and motorcycles.

Slow Food, Fast Cars captures the extraordinary sensory and culinary experience of staying at Casa Maria Luigia. Created in close collaboration with Lara and Massimo, the book collects 85 authentic, accessible recipes for breakfasts, brunches, and all-day snacks, including frittatas and focaccias, salads, cakes and pastries, jams and preserves and more.

At Casa Maria Luigia the past collides with the contemporary, and home cooks will discover seasonal variations for each recipe, as well as information about the dish’s origins and ingredients. Evocative photography and personal essays tell the fascinating stories behind every element of this magical guest house, from the incredible food to the interior design, cars, vinyl collection, garden, and country landscape.

About the author:

Massimo Bottura is the chef patron of Osteria Francescana, a three-Michelin-star restaurant that he opened in 1995 in Modena, Italy, which was ranked #1 in the World's 50 Best in 2016. Massimo was interested in cooking from a young age. In 1986, he opened his first restaurant and subsequently developed his love of food while working for Alain Ducasse and Ferran Adrià. Massimo has created Refettorios, soup kitchens that use excess food from supermarkets and local suppliers to provide healthy, seasonal meals for people in need. He is the author of Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef, which was also published by Phaidon.

Lara Gilmore is a fine arts major, restaurateur, author, and hotelier. She met Massimo, her husband, while working in New York. Together they opened Osteria Francescana in 1995 and Casa Maria Luigia in 2019.