One dinner. Two lands. A result worth telling.

There is a moment, during a dinner that truly works, when the room stops being a collection of tables and becomes something else. A temporary community. A place where people look at each other, and what they share — that evening — is stronger than what divides them.

Friday, March 6, 2026, at Hotel La Perla in Corvara, that moment arrived.

How an evening like this is born

It all begins with a simple idea, as the truest ideas tend to be: waste nothing. And make sure that "nothing wasted" becomes something concrete for those who have less.

Anna Sofia Gamper, Rosalie Tratter, Anna Ellecosta and Emmy Crazzolara are four final-year students at the Hotel Management School in Brunico. They designed a zero-waste menu — a four-course gastronomic journey where every ingredient has a story, and that story doesn't end in the bin. They then met Riccardo Forzan, Executive Chef of Hotel La Perla, and together they turned that idea into an evening.

It was not a straightforward process. Building a menu that genuinely respects a no-waste philosophy takes time, research, technique and a good deal of courage. It's not about "using up leftovers": it's about looking at ingredients differently, anticipating waste and transforming it into a culinary choice before it ever becomes refuse. The students did this with precision and with that quiet awareness you sometimes see in young people who have truly understood what they are doing.

The Alps and Ethiopia at the same table

The menu brought something unusual to the table: a conversation between two distant geographies. Riccardo Forzan knows Ethiopia not from books. Years ago he crossed that country alone, backpack on his shoulders, from south to north. A journey that never quite left him — and that evening, he brought it into the kitchen.

It began with injera bread — fermented for 24 hours, cooked like a crêpe, served with Jerusalem artichoke and Alpine carrot. A dish that felt like an introduction: this is where we come from, and this is where this gesture comes from. It continued with buckwheat tortelli with malga ricotta, then marbled Alpine trout with fermented vegetables (savoy cabbage and beetroot prepared seven days in advance, because fermentation has its own rhythm and cannot be rushed), and finally a millefeuille of red turnips with a chia seed skin, and Gravensteiner apple with white chocolate mousse and pink Moscato kombucha.

A menu that spoke of technique, territory and respect. Dishes that did not seek to impress but to connect — those who had conceived them with those who ate them, the Alps with East Africa, the work in the kitchen with the meaning of what was happening beyond it.

A full room. An unexpected result.

Hotel La Perla's dining room was full. The staff was present in every detail — with that professional discretion that makes guests feel at the centre of things without anyone saying so out loud. And the students were outstanding: present, precise, able to hold the room with a naturalness that takes time and passion to build.

At the end of the evening, the total raised was €3,000.

The following day, one of the guests contacted the foundation to add a further €2,000 as a personal donation. A spontaneous choice, made hours after the evening had ended, when something had evidently stayed with them.

Total: €5,000, already transferred to the Busajo Campus in Soddo, Ethiopia.

The Busajo Campus: building futures, not dependency

The Busajo Campus is located in Soddo, in southern Ethiopia. It is a residential and educational centre that takes in girls and young women living on the streets, offering them schooling, vocational training and psychosocial support. Not a place of assistance in the narrow sense, but a place where people learn a skill, complete a course of study, and build the tools they need to become independent.

Casa Costa Foundation ETS has supported the Campus for years. It is one of those projects where the work becomes visible — not immediately, not through short-term figures, but over time. In the stories of the young women who leave with a qualification, a diploma, a real possibility.

When we say that the €5,000 raised that evening goes toward building futures, it is not a slogan. It is literally what happens.

Hospitality as a method, not a stage

A question we are often asked: why does a foundation like Casa Costa Foundation ETS organise dinners, work with kitchens, build events around hospitality? Wouldn't it be more direct to simply raise funds?

The answer is in what happened on Friday evening. Hospitality is not a backdrop: it is the method. It is the capacity to create a space where people meet, lower their guard, and listen to stories different from their own. It is the kitchen as a shared language. It is a student from Brunico bringing Alpine buckwheat to the table alongside injera from the Ethiopian highlands — and people understanding something that no report could ever communicate.

This is the Soil, Soul, Society framework that guides our work: territory as root (Soil), human relationships as engine (Soul), collective responsibility as horizon (Society). Not three separate concepts, but a single movement.

Taste to Taste – No Waste was all of this, in one evening.

A thank you worth writing.

Thank you to Anna Sofia Gamper, Rosalie Tratter, Anna Ellecosta and Emmy Crazzolara — for the courage, the preparation and the grace with which they held that evening together. Thank you to Riccardo Forzan, who brought not only his skill but his story into the kitchen. Thank you to the entire staff of Hotel La Perla, for the quiet, precise presence that made every moment possible. And thank you to everyone who was there, and to those who chose to keep giving even afterwards.

We'll see you at the next edition.