Foto Friday: touring Gustiamo’s with Radishes and Rubbish 19 June 2009 5:07 pm
Posted by Tracy in : consumerism,eating,food snobbery,local food,nyc,pictures,school , trackbackSo last weekend I went back to Eugene to visit Peter during his department’s graduation festivities. It was… surreal, and I’m very impressed that he’s managing to get any work done in a setting that made me constantly worry that Bush was still president. Eek. I did manage to revisit several of my favorite things to eat in Eugene while I was there, which leads me to the subject of food tours, which is as good an excuse as any to finish writing about one I took back during spring break (I know, awkward transition, but today I am beating my little hater of writer’s block perfectionism).
On Friday, March 13, Gallatin senior Annie Myers led a small band of intrepid explorers (gastronauts?) from NYU’s Radishes and Rubbish club to a warehouse in the Bronx, which despite the date, was not as ominous as it sounds:
See? The warehouse in question is home to Gustiamo, a small import company whose specialty is nothing less than the finest foods Italy has to offer. Co-owner Martina Rossi Kenworthy led us around and showed us the stock:
including such noteworthy items as Colatura anchovy sauce:
You can read more about this ancient Roman seasoning on Gustiamo’s website 
and more still on the official Gusti blog.
Other highlights of the tour included true 100% San Marzano tomatoes (not pictured, but click on the link for Gustiamo’s story about them) and Sant’Eustachio coffee, which one of these days will be the subject of an entire TracyFood post all to itself, and not just because of the hilarious-to-me typo on the canisters (you can click on the picture for a more readable version of the image on my Flickr). Meanwhile, here’s the official Gustiamo blog post about this artisanally roasted coffeeliciousness. See? I told you it was fancy and post-worthy.
Martina’s co-owner Beatrice Ughi had an olive oil tasting ready for us after our tour:
but the generosity did not end there! We got to share a lunch made with many of the fabulous ingredients we’d learned about on the warehouse tour:
Those pictures are well worth clicking on to see close up, especially my plate. I wish I’d gotten a better picture of the lentils, which were my favorite. Yum. The pasta is spelt (farro) with Slow Food-recognized heirloom tomatoes, and the rice is carnaroli, which I think of as “the other risotto rice” (Arborio being the more well-known kind, at least to me).
Over lunch, we had an interesting conversation about (among other things), the importance of certifying high-quality, artisanal products in a world of anonymous food. You can read a little more about that discussion in this a Gustiamo blog post by Beatrice, who noticed I was taking notes not long after she said, “We are the Devil for the zero-miles movement.” I mean, how could I resist writing that down?
Anyway, Beatrice, here at long last is my blog post about you and your company. Over lunch, you asked what we had learned during our visit, and I will repeat here what I mentioned then: I didn’t know there were such things as pasta made with single-origin, even heirloom wheat. Or bergamot jelly! Or chianti vinegar, or black risotto rice (summarized in my notebook with the words DO WANT). Finally, right below the Devil comment in my notes is the following, which I think you might appreciate:
The Gustiamo’s argument is that if you’re going to buy from far away, it should be THE BEST. They are just one element in building systems to support small, artisanal producers.
It’s sort of Fair Trade-y.
My notes on the olive oil tasting no longer make sense to me, or I would have had more to write about that. The take-home lesson is: shut up, little hater! For reals. Also, that if I’d been feeling rich, I would’ve bought every one of those items I didn’t know existed, plus some Colatura sauce. As it was, I went home with two cans of those San Marzano tomatoes, plus Sant’Eustacchio coffee, Latini Classica spaghetti, and Acquerello organic carnaroli rice. The rice is all that’s left, but mushroom risotto has been calling my name lately, so…
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Ansley
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http://balancefood.blogspot.com Chou
