by Richard Gleaves

The polemics in The Futurist Cookbook were followed by an elaborate account of some Futurist banquets. One of the more memorable of these Aeropranzi futuristi was a banquet for 300 people held on 18 December 1931 at the Hotel Negrino in Chiavari. Guests were delighted and terrified as they braced themselves to ingest dishes prepared by the famous cook Bulgheroni, who had come especially from Milan to this small Ligurian town to preside in the kitchen over the burial of pastasciutta.

Although the Futurists had advocated the abolition of eloquence and politics around the table, the guests nevertheless first had to sit through a lecture by Marinetti on the state of world Futurism. Afterward, the meal began with a flan of calf's head seated on a bed of pineapple, nuts, and dates, stuffed—oh, surprise!—with anchovies. Then, to cleanse the palate, Bulgheroni served a decollapalato (a pun on decollare, meaning "to get off the ground"), a lyrical concoction of meat broth sprinkled with champagne and liquor and decorated with rose petals.

The main dish was beef in carlinga (another aeronautic term, probably referring to a kind of Dutch oven), meatballs—whose composition was best left uninvestigated—placed over airplanes made out of bread crumbs. After a few more dishes the dessert, named eletricita atmosferische candite, arrived, consisting of colorful little cubes made of fake marble crowned with cotton candy that enclosed a sweetish paste containing ingredients only a long chemical analysis could disclose.

Not everybody made it to the end of the dinner.

  — Romy Galan, Ingestion/Anti-Pasta, Cabinet Magazine, Issue 10, Spring 2003