Order the right dish at the right trattoria in Italy and you won't just leave full — you'll walk out with the hand-painted ceramic plate your food was served on. It's called Piatti del Buon Ricordo, or "plates of good memories," and it's one of the country's most charming bits of food culture that most visitors have never heard of.
The idea dates to 1964, when marketing whiz Dino Villani — the man behind the contest that led to Miss Italia and the dove-shaped Colomba Pasquale Easter bread — wanted to defend traditional Italian cooking at a time when French-influenced menus were fashionable and supermarkets were squeezing out local foodways. His fix was simple: dine at a member trattoria, order the signature regional dish, and take home the plate it came on. A dozen restaurants signed up at first; the scheme grew to more than 130, and today 111 trattorias still take part under the Buon Ricordo Restaurant Union.
The plates themselves are made from clay quarried at Ogliara and hand-painted by artisans at Ceramiche Artistiche Solimene in Vietri sul Mare on the Amalfi Coast, a town famous for its ceramics. Since 1985, Milanese designer Paolo Argenton has illustrated each one with the restaurant's chosen dish plus scenes of its hometown. In the 1970s and '80s, collecting them was a national obsession — families planned road trips around which trattoria's plate came next, and a dining-room wall covered in them signalled both money and good taste. Vintage plates now trade on eBay from a few euros to over 150, and they show up at design fairs and shops as far afield as New York.
For a modern traveller, the real appeal is what the plate represents: a guarantee of serious regional cooking. Every member restaurant commits to a signature dish that exemplifies its local cuisine. That could be the seasonally changing risotto at La Locanda dei Beccaria in Lombardy, pork tenderloin with Sagrantino wine reduction at Taverna del Lupo in Gubbio, Umbria, or the twisted ferrazzuoli pasta with smoked swordfish at Hostaria Baccofurore 1930 on the Amalfi Coast. Alba's La Piola even puts a contemporary spin on the idea, serving Piemontese classics like agnolotti del plin on artist-designed plates sold through the family's nearby Ceretto winery.
The timing is good for a food-focused trip. Italian cuisine just became the first entire cuisine recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, and the trattoria — a family-run, grandmother-cooked style of eating that dates to the Middle Ages — is having a moment. If you're plotting a route through northern Italy, the Riviera or the Amalfi Coast, checking the Buon Ricordo member list before you book dinner is an easy way to eat well and come home with a story as well as a souvenir. Just remember to actually order the signature dish; that's the one that comes with the plate.
