Food Love + Italy = Eataly

So as I mentioned in my last post, I have recently started a new job in Torino, (thus the frequent Torino postings). I am excited about this because I have loved the city ever since the first time I visited over three years ago, and because my new job is pretty much located at my idea of heaven. Eataly.

Oh you clever Italians.

Describing Eataly is never an easy task because there is nothing to compare it to. Grocery store? Yes, but not like you know. Restaurant? Oh yes, that too. Perhaps it is easier just to take you on a tour.

The first thing you will notice as you enter is that Eataly is nothing like any grocery store you have visited before. The typical set-up of entering into the fruits and veggies, finding your dairy and meats along the periphery, and processed foods down the aisles doesn't exist here. There is no prescribed flow of traffic, silently herding you up and down, in and out. A Wendell Berry quote, proposing that, "eating is an agricultural act," greets you at the entrance and a huge fruit and vegetable wheel guides you in selecting your seasonal favorites. The concept of aisles is minimally applied here; rather the old vermouth factory has been converted into a sunny store, with an open, spacious design, complete with a vermouth museum on its top floor.

Besides the physical set up of the store, what sets it apart from any other grocery is what you are filling your basket with. The products here, as you probably guessed from its title, are Italian products, mainly produced by small artisan producers. The story goes that Eataly's founder and owner, Oscar Farinetti, was strolling through Salone del Gusto (Slow Food's food and wine fair) and thought to himself how great it would be if someone opened a store to sell all the amazing foods featured there. Then he realized that that someone could be him, and so we find ourselves some years later with stores popping up like weeds (the good ones, of course). The mother-ship is in Torino, but you can also find smaller shops in Milan, Bologna, Asti, and Pinerolo. Head east from Italy, you'll find several stores in Tokyo, head west and you will soon find one in New York City.

Rather than aisles, the store is laid out in sections: fruits and veggies, seafood, meat, cheese and cured meats, pastas, olive oils, preserved condiments, a bakery and an entire floor dedicated to wine and artisan beers. Each section has its own little restaurant featuring dishes made by the exact products you are buying. Genius.

Pick a bottle and fill it with your choice of good red or white wine for about 3 Euros

While Eataly could have easily become another specialty delicatessen with a limited elite market, the owners strategically prevented that by locating the store in a more industrial part of the city and keeping their prices competitive. Sure you will pay a bit more for your hand rolled pasta here than you would for a box of industrial stuff elsewhere, but with your tastier dinner comes a story of the producer you are supporting. That's what Eataly is all about: eating and drinking well, learning and supporting.

The more you know, the better it tastes.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Gelato!

I know this isn't necessarily the right season to write about mind-numbingly cold foods (Spring. I thought you had arrived at long last, but then it SNOWED for two hours today. Where are you??), but let's be honest here, is there really a right and wrong season for ice cream? I mean gelato?? Absolutely not. Oh and for all those Italians who boast that their gelato is much better than ours in the U.S., well ice cream and gelato are not the same thing, so let's set the record straight. Ice cream has more dairy fat in it than gelato, which accounts for the harder, less creamy factor (thus more cream ≠ creamier ice cream), while gelato has more sugar in it than ice cream. And today my dears we are talking about gelato.

I have eaten a good deal of gelato over the past three years and my taste ranges from high quality chocolate shop specialty flavors to "kiddie" flavors like an ultra smooth Nutella gelato. Yum. But in narrowing down my choices for best Italian gelato I come up with Giolitti in Rome and Grom which is, well, everywhere.

For anyone who is up on Italian gelato, Giolitti might seem like a boring, obvious choice, but I have to say that the first time I went there I knew nothing about it the place and it really was one of those, "AhHAH!" moments. I was blown away and in fact have subsequently planned overnight stays in Rome on my way through that area of Italy just for their gelato. Hands down, every time pistacchio with whipped cream on top. The pistacchio is mind-boggingly good: the perfect combination of the sweetness one expects in gelato with the slightly savory flavor of the toasted nuts. And the cream is of course the real, fluffy, light as a feather stuff. Sigh. Love.

Then there is Grom which has become a gelato chain of sorts. Unlike the quality you expect from a chain of anything, Grom really takes great care to only put the best ingredients into their gelato: lemons and pistachios from Sicily, vanilla from Madagascar, hazelnuts from Piedmont. You get the idea. Plus they use several Slow Food presidia ingredients, like coffee from a Central American project as well as the vanilla.

Once I was with a friend who was enjoying his Grom gelato when an overly zealous lick tipped the guy right off its cone onto the rather nasty Turin street. Without hesitation he scooped it right off the pavement, karate chopped off the dirtied part and went on his happy way. That's the kind of unwavering devotion this gelato inspires.

Love all the creamy flavors, love how they have a special flavor of the month and love, love, love how the sorbets can really save a melting soul come mid-July.

They started off in Turin and have since expanded throughout Italy, Europe and oh yes, that is a New York City taxi cab in the photo. I've been told that it is just as good in the Big Apple as it is in Turin's mother Grom, though apparently you do pay a pretty American penny for it.

Giolitti
Via Uffici del Vicario, 40
Rome, Italy
+39 06 699 1243

Grom
www.grom.it

The Perfect Meal for January 1st

Oh why do you have to be so far away?

Everyone,
ok, let me start again.
Every American
has their
pick of
best burger ever.

For me, hands down, it's the burger from
Diner
in Brooklyn.

Much anticipated, long overdue, it lived up to every expectation.

Perfectly cooked, happy grass fed beef,
oozy goozy cheese,
pickeled red onions,
homemade mayo
and crunchy fries

Gorgeous.

And just lovingly recreated in my little Italian kitchen.

Diner
85 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718-486-3077