There are moments when you realize that a farm product ceases to be merely a tradition and becomes a form of contemporary expression. This happened while talking about fava beans at Favalanciata. In recent years, having personally attended the Fava Bean Lunch organized by its Slow Food Community, I had already seen this ancient legume transform into a cultural narrative, a symbol of identity, and a gastronomic memory.

But this time, the shift was different—bolder, more pop-culture-inspired, and probably more contemporary. Because fava beans have found their place on gourmet pizzas and in desserts—and not just for the sake of provocation. The impression I got while tasting some of the creations dedicated to Favalanciata was that fava beans are enjoying a second gastronomic life: no longer just companions to pecorino cheese, bread, and wine at spring feasts, but ingredients capable of entering a new culinary language made up of textures, creams, vegetable contrasts, and gastronomic innovation.

A humble ingredient that finds its place in modern cuisine without losing its folk roots.

The name that often accompanies me on this journey is that of Armando D’Ascanio, a pizzaiolo from Ascoli at “È Bona Furia,” someone who has been working for years on regional culinary fusions without turning them into a creative exercise for its own sake. When he talks about the fava beans from Favalanciata, he never speaks in a tone meant to impress. Rather, he speaks like someone trying to take a humble ingredient and respectfully restore it to the center of the plate: “Fava beans have incredible depth, especially when they’re pureed. They possess sweetness, a vegetal quality, and a lingering finish. On pizza, they can become elegant.”

Perhaps this is precisely the adjective you wouldn’t expect to hear in connection with fava beans: elegant. For years, contemporary cuisine has chased after exotic ingredients, Nordic fermentations, and Eastern techniques. Today, however, some pizza makers are returning to signature ingredients, treating them with a modern approach. Fava beans seem perfect for this: velvety creams, herbaceous notes, aged pecorino, chicory, Amatrice-style guanciale, but also more surprising pairings with oily fish.

When tradition meets technique, the result isn’t nostalgia—it’s evolution.

In the world of Italian gourmet pizza, this kind of exploration has been going on for some time. But in the case of the fava beans from Favalanciata, there’s something different. In this inland area of the Piceno region, it’s not just about cuisine—it’s about identity. Because behind those fava beans lies a Slow Food community—a region scarred by the earthquake that has chosen to transform a product from its own gardens into a cultural, convivial, and even creative symbol. It’s fascinating to see how today that symbol ends up on a contemporary pizza without losing its folk soul and goes viral online amid likes and comments.

This is precisely the most interesting challenge facing Italian gastronomy today: making tradition contemporary without distorting it, without turning it into a privilege. In Favalanciata, they probably began doing this before many others. And the most surprising thing is that all of this still feels incredibly like home.

Modernity truly works only when it doesn’t erase the everyday life from which it springs.

During the Fava Bean Lunch, to my surprise, I also found myself faced with something that definitively overturned an old gastronomic cliché. Because at a certain point, they arrived to capture the diners’ attention: the fava bean desserts. Elegant little cubes, glossy, green as mountain meadows in May, with an aesthetic delicacy more reminiscent of contemporary pastry than of an extended family lunch in a small town in central Italy.

I looked at them almost with admiration, and I’ll admit, I hadn’t seen them together before that moment, not even during the rehearsals. Armando, the local ladies, and I were afraid we might be creating a gastronomic provocation designed solely for show. But no: from the diners’ very first bite, we realized that this dessert embodied the true essence of the region. The fava beans didn’t overwhelm the palate, nor did they seek to shock by loudly asserting their presence.

The vegetable-based sweetness of the fava beans creates balance, not eccentricity.

They achieved something much more difficult: they brought a plant-based sweetness—almost velvety—that evoked pistachio but with a more rustic, more authentic, and less trendy personality. At that moment, I found myself smiling. Because perhaps the problem is that for too long we’ve treated fava beans as a minor ingredient, relegating them to the simplest peasant traditions, without imagining that they could also have a contemporary dimension.

At that moment, I thought that Favalanciata, its people, and its friends are doing something very interesting without perhaps fully realizing it. Daniela, Marisa, and Armando are taking an ancient agricultural symbol and bringing it into new culinary contexts. Whether it’s gourmet pizza or homemade pastries, the incredible thing is that none of this feels forced—in fact, it feels as natural as certain intuitions that arise only in places where food isn’t about marketing, but about everyday memory.

And anyone who keeps saying that fava beans only go well with cheese has perhaps not yet tried these pizzas and desserts—or has never been to Favalanciata.