DINING OUT about Lacerba, a restaurant in Milan, Italy, which serves food derived from the Futurist Cookbook by poet Filippo Marinetti… Writer tells about Monica Trapasso, Angelo Trapasso and Marco Pagano who bought a pizzeria in Milan with the intention of converting it to a trattoria. The sign above the pizzeria read “Lacerba,” which wasn’t even a word in Italian. Tells about Monica Trapasso going to an art exhibit in Venice and seeing a Picasso collage which included the letters from an old newspaper named Lacerba. The newspaper was a mainstay of the artistic movement known as futurism. The movement, which celebrated speed, machines and violence, was created by Marinetti in 1909 when he published the Futurist manifesto on the front page of Le Figaro. Tells about Trapasso’s chef, Pino Carvelli, who came up with the idea of trying to make something palatable from Marinetti’s descriptions of futurist foods. By now, Carvelli has mastered more than two dozen dishes from the cookbook, Lacerba also has a traditional menu of meat, pasta and fish dishes. Writer tells about trying one of the futurist dishes, called “Italian Sea,” which features figs, olives, bananas and cuttlefish impaled on upright skewers… Bourgeois incomprehension, or even disgust, was precisely the reaction that Futurism sought. Tells about Marinetti’s life and the work of Futurist painters, particularly Umberto Boccioni. The Futurists adapted the techniques of cubism to their violent aesthetic. Tells about Marinetti’s politics. He glorified war and advocated Italy’s entry in the First World War. When Italy did enter the war, a number of Futurist artists died in combat. Tells about Marinetti’s long and tortuous relationship with Mussolini… Discusses the Futurist cookbook as a reaction to traditional Italian cuisine. The first step would be the renunciation of pasta. Marinetti observed that paste led to “big bellies” and advocated rice as a substitute. Tells about the Futurist restaurant the Holy Palate in Turin, where dishes such as “Steel Chicken” were prepared… There was a revolution coming, but Marinetti didn’t see it coming. The future belonged not to McDonald’s and Archer Daniels Midland. The latest culinary movement to emerge from Italy embraces a philosophy that Marinetti would have reviled. It goes by the name of Slow Food.