If we rely on the numbers, Dinner Club would seem to be a show in crisis: in the first edition of the “cooking travelogue” (travel and cooking story) the host and cook Carlo Cracco had brought six VIPs (Fabio De Luigi, Luciana Littizzetto, Diego Abatantuono, Valerio Mastandrea, Sabrina Ferilli and Pierfrancesco Favino) on individual trips to six places around Italy, to then replicate the recipes learned from the chefs of place in six different dinners. In the second edition, chef Cracco brought four famous people (Antonio Albanese, Paola Cortellesi, Marco Giallini and Luca Zingaretti) on as many trips, who were joined at dinner by Littizzetto and Ferilli.

In Dinner Club 3 there are only three VIPs traveling with Cracco – Christian De Sica, Emanuela Fanelli, Rocco Papaleo – and the trip is unique, as is the dinner attended by the “former students” Ferilli and Albanese and the guest surprise Corrado Guzzanti. Yet, whether it is a necessary budget cut to cover expenses, or whether (as in our opinion is more likely) the decrease in trips, guests and dinners is to be attributed to the difficulties of fitting in the commitments of Cracco and his actor friends, Dinner Club 3 remains an unmissable show. Before expressing our opinion, however, let’s explain in more detail how this third edition of the Prime show that couldn’t be more Italian works.

Who’s there, where are you going and what are you eating in Dinner Club 3

In this third edition, Cracco traveled on a camper (as per Dinner Club tradition, not exactly brand new) together with his guests along the Via Appia, the ancient Roman road that connects Rome to Brindisi crossing Lazio, Campania, Basilicata and Puglia for approximately 550 kilometers in total.

Along the way, the four travelers stopped, to eat, to get food or to sleep, in the municipalities of Norma, Terracina, Formia, San Leucio, Sant’Agata de’ Goti, Carife, Venosa, Irsina, Tricarico, Taranto , Savelletri and Brindisi.

In these places the chef and the actors discovered traditions, met people and above all tasted dishes and local specialties of all kinds, from ramiccia pasta to Taranto mussels, from conger eel to caciocavallo, from bull testicles to capicolli, from pasta timbales to of a Michelin starred restaurant.

And obviously, in the convivial dinner, Cracco helped Papaleo, De Sica and Fanelli to recreate the recipes learned during the camper trip, with the veterans Sabrina Ferilli and Antonio Albanese ready to judge and the guest Corrado Guzzanti who does not spare his irony . At the bottom of the review you will find the trailer, if you want to get into the mood.

What’s great about Dinner Club 3

Let’s be honest: we would have preferred more trips, more VIPs and more dinners for this Dinner Club 3. But because this show is a pleasure for the eyes, as well as a tremendous source of mouth watering.

And so even if the Dinner Club format is shrinking, the values ​​that make it a true “spiritual journey” remain intact, as Rocco Papaleo defined it to our microphones. That is, an intimate and profound journey to discover little-known Italian foods and territories but of immense beauty, landscape and obviously gastronomic.

Cheeses, fish, sausages, pasta, even the inevitable offal and offal typical of this show (but this year to a limited extent): everything contributes to telling, through images and flavors that we can only guess at from the screen, the extraordinary fortune of living in a country where literally on every corner there is a typical delicacy to be enjoyed with the palate and the heart.

Added to this, obviously, is the pleasure of eating all together, with a dinner with friends which – perhaps thanks to a few glasses of wine – becomes an opportunity to unbutton ourselves a little, joke, confide in each other and even mention a few dance steps or a improvised parade.

Dinner Club will continue to function as long as there are characters ready to travel with Cracco (who excites us every time he touches a food, an ingredient, a utensil) and to accept his jokes as a primary school child in order to discover territories, stories, people and especially foods from our country.

Rating: 8