Italian producer Andrea Iervolino (“Waiting for the Barbarians”) has acquired a controlling stake in central London’s Mercato Metropolitano food market and teamed with British music producer David Tickle’s Tickle Entertainment on a doc series set there about global food culture.
Iervolino, whose Iervolino and Lady Bacardi Entertainment (ILBE) company produces feature films including Bobby Moresco’s upcoming “Lamborghini,” is also the founder of innovative digital entertainment platform TaTaTu, a social media platform that uses a form of rewards points called TTU Coins.
TaTaTu recently acquired a controlling stake in London’s Mercato Metropolitano from its founder Andrea Rasca who in 2016 established this pioneering community market as a space for social exchange and environmental sustainability. The Mercato is now being used as the location for an upcoming docu-series chronicling the journey of four chefs who sought refuge in the United Kingdom respectively from Syria, Namibia, Nepal, and Uzbekistan.
“These people transformed the food of their homeland into their livelyhood, bridging the cultural gap with new flavors because of the incubator program designed by Mercato,” according to a TaTaTu statement.
The show titled “The Unknown Chef” is being produced by Iervolino with British music producer David Tickle via his Tickle Entertainment shingle. Tickle is known for his work with artists including Blondie, Peter Gabriel, U2, Prince, and Joe Cocker.
“Food is essential in everyone’s life, and my interest in cooking is like my passion in music production: it is international and highly subjective to every cook, with a balance of different ingredients that gives it the uniqueness and the result of the different chefs,” Tickle said in a statement.
“I am proud to collaborate with Andrea Iervolino and TaTaTu to bring these stories to an international audience,” he added.
Said Iervolino: “In addition to the integration of TTU Coins and the expansion of the circular economy concept, we have seen in Mercato the opportunity to use the locations and to tell hundreds of stories related to food, culture and entrepreneurship to produce premium content for an international audience.”
