I had high hopes of finding some of italy's finest and maybe rarer produce in a high end farmers market 'style' environment. Instead I found a window into Italy through the eyes of very commercial America. \r
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Here's the commercial bit, jar upon jar of pesto - which doesn't keep well and is sooo easy to make, yet only a few stems of wilted sad looking basil. You couldn't taste any olive oils or balsamics and there wasn't a great deal of information with them either so unless looking for a given make you were buying blind. There was packet upon packet of dried pasta whcih looked pretty good but pricey at $10 a pop for wheat, eggs and drying process of choice (I'm struggling to justify $10 here) then only 1 make of pasta flour which was just under $7 maybe that's what they made the dried pasta from ?\r
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Now for the ingredients, I had a couple of test ingredients on my list ""bottarga - mediterranean cured fish roe"" and ""strattu - scicilian sun baked tomato paste."" The staff member I managed to find had no idea what Strattu was, didn't care to ask and pointed me in the direction of the jars of pesto without giving my question a second thought. Needless to say I found neither of them. I then thoguht smoked pancetta surely but nope only unsmoked and made in the USA.\r
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So the restaurants may be good but I wouldn't come back here to shop, I'd go to Agata and Valentina where the ingredients are carefully sourced form Italy, well priced and the staff knowledgeable, helpful and passionate about what they are doing. i believe they sell strattu too.\r
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Yes there was some fine produce but , good olive oils (that I couldn't try) \r
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