Turin, 1931. A few feet from where Antonio Carpano was said to have invented vermouth nearly 150 years prior, the Taverna del Santopalato  — that’s the “Tavern of the Holy Palate” — opened with a braggadocious bang.

If we’re to believe the contemporaneous report from Italian daily La Stampa, March 8, 1931 would remain “impressed in the history of the art of cooking, just as the dates of the discovery of America, the storming of the Bastille, the Congress of Vienna or the Treaty of Versailles are indelibly fixed in the history of the world.”