Announcing: Florentine Gourmet Club by Curious Appetite!

Hello readers! If you follow me on social media or are one of my newsletter subscribers, you may have noticed a mention or few about this new Florentine Gourmet Club

What’s it all about?

This is a food club, similar to a wine club, in which we send educational material like ingredient guides & recipes passed down to our writers from their Italian grandmothers along with a fine selection of Italian foods. We collaborate with the finest larders in Florence to curate a specialty Italian food basket, which is mailed from Florence to you.

Besides mailing the specialty goods, we include very personal touches such as a designed cotton shopper bag with our logo, a product fact sheet detailing what makes these ingredients so special: info about the producer, historical anecdotes about the ingredient and suggested culinary applications. We also include a recipe which was developed & tested by a local food writer with Italian heritage, passed down by her Italian nonna. (link to the club HERE)

What about costs & shipping? 

The club is organized by 3 levels to fit a variety of budgets and appetites with no joining costs. Each level is quoted per box mailing, not for the entire year of 4 mailings. We do 4 seasonal box mailings in a year of the club and only level 1 is required to subscribe for the whole year. Level 2 only needs to subscribe for 2 seasons of their choice and Level 3 is a one-time subscription. Level 2 & 3 are probably the best value since shipping costs are included in each quote. I’d say Level 3 is the greatest hit for culinary addicts because you get super fine ingredients like white truffle paste, white truffle salt and whole truffles plus large bottles of olive oil, specialty compotes and a handful of reserve gold quality specialty cheeses, in addition to many other gems. Pricing and info HERE

Why choose Curious Appetite to procure a specialty Italian good box?

I started writing about food because food has been my lifelong passion. My first job was at a grocery store and since accumulated about 15 years in grocery/specialty food retail and culinary tourism combined. I grew up being taught the importance of quality food & ingredients, my Italian-American mother never skimping on the best quality olive oil at home.

In the states, I’ve always found it extremely difficult to get high quality Italian ingredients from non-industrial producers. When I studied abroad in Italy, my suitecase would come back full of not Italian bags & shoes (or Fabios), but new olive oil, truffle goods, salts, spices, etc. I’ve come to understand that “made in Italy” doesn’t equate “Italian grown/sourced.” I assure you I have a discerning eye with products based on my combined work & education experience.

I rarely do grocery shopping anymore because it is time-consuming to have to read every single label not letting a filler or artificial bad guy pass in my cart, so I usually shop at the market or from trusted specialty larders. If you know me, you’ll know I’m not a huge fashionista or particularly materialistic. Instead, I get my consumerism thrills from food shopping, restaurants, hooch & gelato. Part of the reason why I think Italian cuisine is so great is not only the fresh, flavorful fruits vegetables, meats & seafood- but also the fascinating ingredients which can transform them into sensorial masterpieces.

Aged balsamic vinegar, mono-varietals of estate grown & pressed olive oil, Sicilian-grown capers, foraged truffles from San Miniato, pistachios from Bronte, Italian roasted coffee besides mega conglomerates- these are some of the things I wish Italian food lovers abroad had better access to. After working in retail, it’s a bit of a high order to find small-batch specialty products conveniently merchandised on shop shelves. A producer would have to meet the demand of a distributor to make the effort & costs worth it. If a producer is making enough of a good for international distribution to say a chain like Whole Foods- chances are it’s an industrial product with plenty of short cuts and inferior raw materials.

So I thought, why not offer a small boutique service of extending a taste from Florence to my readers & tour guests? 

The club has launched and the first box ready to head to your doorsteps! This season’s mailings includes a bit from summer and a bit from Fall with some tangy sun-dried tomatoes from a tiny producer in Sicily, capers cured in coarse sea salt, aged sheep’s milk Tuscan pecorino cheeses, pumpkin spiced compote to accompany the cheeses, Tuscan extra virgin olive oil, a myriad of truffle goods (level depending) coffee roasted by craft roasters in Florence and more! More info can be viewed HERE

Like on my food tours, one of my passions is imparting knowledge to curious Italian food lovers. Which is why this not a delivery service, but a food club. The club provides educational material to accompany the flavors we send, as well as the tools to use them like with easy to follow nonna-sourced recipes.

You can join by filling out the form with the link in the following webpage: https://curiousappetitetravel.com/florentine-food-club

If you have any questions or comments- feel free to leave them in the comment section! Would love to hear your thoughts. If you didn’t receive my newsletter, you can view our latest mailing HERE and also subscribe for future tastes!

In your gourmet club trust,

Curious Appetite

p.s. if you joined already and would like to share your finds on social, you can use the hashtag #FlorenceGourmetClub- I’m @curiousappetite on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Ciao e buon appetito!