Last summer, the Treviso-based restaurant Le Beccherie, generally recognized as the birthplace of tiramisù, made headlines when it presented a bid to the European Union, backed by Veneto governor Luca Zaia, to grant protected status to its recipe to prevent it being made with strawberries or cream.
Today, the news is different, and it is not good: Le Beccherie is closing down, after 76 years in business and three generations of the Campeol family managing it.
Although other restaurants in the area claim they own the original recipe for tiramisù, it is generally accepted that the world-renowned dessert was invented at Le Beccherie in the 1970s by the mother of the current owner, Ada, who wanted a dessert that would give her energy after the birth of her son.
“This is not a story that I wanted to read,” Zaia said. ““This is not just the end of a piece of Treviso’s history, but it also marks the closing of a page in the gastronomic culture of the world.”
Zaia had said that tiramisù for Veneto “is like pizza for Naples.”
The restaurant will close on March 30. Owner Carlo Campeol blamed the closure on a drastic reduction in the number of customers due to Italy’s economic crisis.
Try our tiramisù recipe here.
