Slow Food Europe is an organization that promotes local food sourcing, local foodways, and an environmentally sustainable food ecosystem. It was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986, and Italy remains the movement’s epicenter, its most active location. Slow Food Europe works to preserve traditional regional cuisines within each of the countries of Europe and to promote the work of chefs and home cooks who both keep those traditions alive and take them in exciting new directions. Petrini, the movement’s founder, is an enthusiastic and public fan of the role that humble bars, taverns, trattorias, and osterias in Italy have played in the survival and evolution of Italian regional cooking.