"Aggiungi un posto a tavola, che c’è un cliente in più". Ludicizzazione dell’esperienza alimentare e riscritture urbane tra locali clandestini, servizi itineranti e home restaurant

“Hidden”, “temporary”, “itinerant”, and “underground” are some of the adjectives that are frequently used to describe the so–called “guerrilla restaurants”. Since more than a decade ago, such forms of “hidden eatery” have promoted new dietary practices, also continuously “rewriting” urban texts because of their ephemeral and irregular existence. Such a phenomenon has increased visibly in recent years, also leading to socially and legally recognised services, which left the “underground” dimension and became “home restaurants”. Home restaurants have further developed the model of “social eating” promoted by their illegal predecessors, enhancing communication through the introduction of digital platforms (such as Gnammo.com, Ceneromane, Le Cesarine, Eatwith, etc.) for mapping, describing, evaluating, and managing their services and performances. At the same time, they have fomented interesting processes of gamification and active participation in civic life, as well as relevant practices of dematerialisation and rewriting of the urban space. This chapter aims to reflect on such processes by making reference to relevant case studies, which will be analysed through a semiotic methodology.