Almost no one thinks of asking for an oil list or asking the chef at the end of the meal which oil he used to prepare a particular dish.
Yet in other countries, such as Spain and the USA, numerous places offer tastings of bread and extra virgin olive oil exactly as they do for wine.
Here, however, apart from a few particular and isolated initiatives, the drive to promote and enhance this precious food is still lacking, underestimating the potential it holds.
Claudio Vignoli talks about it in his interview for “La Gazzetta del Gusto”.
Extra virgin olive oil: not a simple condiment
In general, oil is still considered a simple condiment. A complementary element, of which not so much the nutritional potential but above all the sensorial one is underestimated. Our Spanish cousins don’t think so: in Spain, for example, there are numerous places that already offer their customers selections of high quality extra virgin olive oil that can be tasted as if they were an aperitif paired with bread.
Yet something is changing here too. Over the last year, the pandemic has brought out a new focus on food and in particular on olive oil (there is talk of an increase in consumption in Italy of 6%; source Assitol). An attention that is destined to transform the simple need for consumption into a desire to rediscover, through food and its combinations, traditions and territories.
Vignoli has been supporting Horeca professionals in the USA for years, precisely to help them in choosing the most suitable olive oils to enhance their menu.
Surely having a bottle of extra virgin olive oil from the mill, to be uncorked at the moment, instead of an anonymous oil of industrial origin, on the table means making the customer “enjoy” flavours, aromas and fragrances. These will involve him exactly like in a wine tasting. If we then make that same bottle available for purchase, we will have a customer who will come back to us even just to buy the oil again.
Read the complete article from “La Gazzetta del Gusto” at the link:
Olio evo e ristorazione, un binomio ancora sottovalutato
