This was the second great honour bestowed upon Bottura in two weeks. On 4 April the local boy made good was awarded the Medaglia d’Oro – “gold medal” – from the commune of Modena (photos here).

photo from Fotoservizio Benito BENEVENTO

So which meant more to the two-Michelin-starred Bottura, the recognition from the worlds’ most accomplished chefs or the show of respect from a city of some 180,000 people famous for the production of Balsamic vinegar, sports car engines and Luciano Pavarotti?

I received what was maybe the hint of an answer from the avant-garde chef and artisanal Balsamic producer on Monday night.

“I just got the gold medal from my town,” the elated Bottura told me on the Guildhall stage he was sharing with Rene Redzepi and Andoni Luis Aduriz, Heston Blumenthal and Grant Achatz. “They recognise what I do.”

That kind of acknowledgement might mean more to a chef in Italy, where stubborn traditionalists may regard gastronomic innovators as traitors. I myself travel Italy as a preservationist preferring simple, old-fashioned trattorias to posh, cutting-edge restaurants. The enemies of Italian invention come from without and within.

“I look at the past not with nostalgia but with creativity,” noted Bottura, defining nostalgia as sentimental praise reserved for the tortellini made by one’s grandmother or the Parmigiano-Reggiano – a speciality of Emilia-Romagna, his home region – from one’s distant past. “Let me tell you, we now have the most beautiful Parmigiano.”

“You must not forget your roots,” added the modernist of Modena, a kitchen magician who transforms Parmigiano cheese into air in his signature ensemble Five Different Ages of Parmigiano-Reggiano in Five Textures. “We are raised on the most beautiful foods. Our techniques, our ideas are in service of those products. This is the future.”

Redzepi was being modest, naturally, but he was also speaking to the subjectivity of taste and to the somewhat esoteric appeal of his foraging for culinary inspiration. Did he mind all the needling about, well, his pine needle garnishes, tree bark reductions and the like?

“It’s fine, it doesn’t bother me”, he replied. “People will disagree. There is no absolute truth.”