Italy 2015 – Our Family Foodie Trip with the Real Italian Bellavita

Our love of Italy began back in 2013 when we took ten of the children on a five week Big Family Road Trip around five different areas: Umbria, Campania, Veneto, Tuscany and Emilia Romagna. It had long been a place we had wanted to visit so when we were finally able to turn our dreams of visiting it into a reality it truly was amazing.

We returned again last year – this time with 11 children – returning to the Veneto region once again although at a far more leisurely pace than we had done the year before.

This year we’re doing something even more different and we are so excited about it!

Let me introduce Bellavita. This name might sound unfamiliar to you, but it might be an idea to take note because this is an event food lovers won’t want to miss!

Bellavita Expo London is the largest Made-in-Italy UK food and beverage trade show. This year’s show follows on from last year’s phenomenal success launch which saw almost 7,000 visitors arrive to interact with the best of the country’s food and drink producers. Currently the biggest B2B of Made-in-Italy food and beverage event in UK, where buyers and starred chefs can directly meet with Italian producers and exhibitors themselves, it is set to become the global benchmark of Italian food and drink.

During this year’s Bellavita Expo which runs from the 19^th to 21^st July at the Business Design Centre in London, visitors can also drop by the Bellavita Theatre Stage where a host of live events and demonstrations will be taking place, including those by celebrity chefs Massimo Bottura, Francesco Mazzei and Aldo Zilli.

The Bellavita London will be open as a B2B event Monday and Tuesday, but also open to the general public on Sunday the 19^th of July. Don’t worry if you can’t attend the expo as the finest, authentic Italian food and drink will soon be available to everyone through their up-coming e-commerce platform due to launch later this year. This is exciting news for lovers of Italian food everywhere, and this is where things get exciting for us.

This year’s trip to Italy will see us teaming up with Bellavita to make this a real treat for our foodie family and hopefully for you too. Some of the best artisan producers of northern Italy have offered to open their doors to our family – yes, all 13 of us visiting the country – to find out what exactly goes into producing the products we know and love so much. From delicious fresh organic salads, mouth-watering panettone and sumptuous wines (hic!), we’re going to interview the people behind the products and discover for ourselves what exactly goes on behind the scenes in producing our favourite foods.

We’ll be sharing our visits on film and letting you know all about them, of course. We do hope you’ll join us for a fabulous food fest of real, quality food. We will be updating with news of our first visit within the next few days. In the meantime you can click here for more information on Bellavita Expo London (there’s also one in Amsterdam in November), or have a read of Bellavita Magazine online here.