I had been meaning to stop by this store long ago but it wasn't until last weekend I finally made it in. And wow - I had been missing out!
I walked in and had no idea what to expect and thought it was strange that there were tons of vats everywhere. When the sales lady asked if there was anything I was looking for I said no and that I was just browing. Well, after basically spinning around in a circle for a minute, I felt stupid and finally asked her to give me a run down of the place. What the most popular items were, the most unique, her favorites, etc. all the good stuff.
She was incredibly helpful and took me for a taste testing of the products. Olive oils first followed by the balsamics. I thought it was very strange to slurp olive oil, but whatever. It was amazing! I fell in love trying all these different products and the sales lady was incredibly helpful. We spoke of different combinations of the olive oils and balsamics for cooking, salad dressings, even for your martinis and cocktails!
I walked out of the store with several purchases: the mission olive oil ( a buttery high quality classic evoo), the jalapeno fused olive oil (incredible), the white balsamic (the stores most popular item) and the pomegranate balsamic (which my love for it exponentially grows the more I use it), siracha salt - had to do it, and 2 pour stoppers or whatever. All have been great.
My favorite usage of these besides combining them for salad dressings - is when I grabbed a huge tuna steak at costco and marinated it in the jalapeno evoo and pomegranate balsamic and some siracha salt and then baked it in the oven. I added a tequila lime dry rub (love spicy things) and it was absolutely delicious!
Anyways, this store was basically made for me and I will certainly be back before my products have run out because I can't wait to accumulate more of these for different combinations! read more