A replica of Palermo's San Lorenzo market, selling Sicilian specialties and street food including typical chickpea fritters and spleen sandwiches, will be set up from September 28 to October 1 in San Michele Square in the town of Mazara Del Vallo as part of the 6th Blue Sea Land Expo of Mediterranean countries. Blue Sea Land is an international expo sponsored by the Fishing and Blue Growth District of Mazara Del Vallo in collaboration with the Region of Sicily to highlight dialogue and collaboration between the production districts of the countries of the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Middle East, and this year it partnered with the San Lorenzo Market to bring it to the expo.
"It's about two different identities that have the same soul," said Giovanni Tumbiolo, president of the Fishing and Blue Growth District, during a press conference in Palermo.
"Walking through this market I felt the same air as that of Blue Sea Land," he said.
"I'm referring to the cultural identity of the products, to offering the public knowledge about the territory, the places, through the largest and most powerful resource that exists in Sicily; that is, its food," he said.
"The two identities have the same values. The value, for example, of the fight against food waste and the value of food as an element of meeting. This 'being different together' is a bit what we've been experiencing for the last few years at Blue Sea Land," he said.
The covered San Lorenzo market in Palermo provides a wide range of food products, about 3,000 of which are from Sicily, made by more than 250 producers throughout the region and beyond. The market is also a hub for events and initiatives linked to food culture and healthy eating.
The market's marketing director, Gaetano Lombardo, said San Lorenzo "is the meeting of many different intentions and approaches to food as raw material from a cultural point of view and as an occasion for conviviality".
"This is also the philosophical approach of the Blue Sea Land expo, with which we consider ourselves to have a common DNA. The great challenge now is to somehow reproduce the atmosphere of the San Lorenzo market in a different place. If we manage to transfer the identity of this place, we can consider it the realization of a great dream, that of experiencing the market as a concept prior to considering it as a large place".
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