You know, we’ve been talking about Oru a lot lately, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m super excited about all the stuff we’ve got going on at Giovane… we’ve got a new chef in there; I kid you not, his name is Giovanni… I couldn’t make up stuff this good 😉

So these past couple weeks he’s been all over subtly “fixing” stuff for me. basically keeping a steady flow of amazing Italian samples coming through and arranging lots of meetings with “guys he knows”. awesome.

End result – bringing in Burrata from Italy every wednesday, we’re talking to farmers in Apulia for olives and oil, and we’re dealing direct with Gragnano in Campania for bronze cut DOP pasta made from the springwater on the property where they’ve been making it for a 100 years… Very cool. we’ll talk more about that once it starts arriving.

So we also started bringing in some serious salumeri. If you follow at all, you’ve probably picked up that we’re pretty excited about all the bacon-making, sausage making and charcuterie we’re doing here, but at the end of the day, you can’t possibly replicate the terroir and the history bred into the pigs for centuries in Emilia Romagna or the effect of curing them in the Mediterranean salt air, any more than you’d be able to produce a great maple syrup in Parma, 😉

So we’re bringing it in… and as you’d expect, it’s really, really good.

That platter is 24 month Parma Prosciutto, Salame Felino, both Coppa and  Culatello di Zibello, and Mortadella Leoncini .

Basically a tour of Parma with a quick stop in Tuscany…

Dead center we have Giovanni’s signature orange mostarda, from the northern regions of Lombardy and Parma, and we’ve also been making an Okanagan quince mostarda in a style more typical to Veneto…

The process of breaking down the leg to reshape it into the traditional pear shape renders the rest of the leg un-useable for prosciutto, so it’s not a process taken lightly…

Perhaps my personal favorite though, really the show-stealer for me, is the Coppa di Zibello… I’m not sure i really need to explain too much about this one, just look at it…                   marbled like A5 Japanese Kobe  😉

And then the Salame Felino, also from just outside of Parma…very nice, good pepper to it

And last but not least, seriously one of the best Mortadellas I’ve ever tasted, from Leoncini, in the heart of Tuscany…

ciao, see you down here 😉