Not Just Lemons: TT Food Sourcing
By Lisa Wolff
Photo by David Weiss
New York is just a short sleep away for our young culinary students and our chefs. Now comes the time to crunch before leaving, in addition to packing their jackets, knives and clean undies, they are planning their time in New York to make sure each event is a smooth and seamless.
The venues and prep kitchens are squared away, orders have been placed. The biggest issue that our Tuttotoscana team faces are the differences in ingredients and sourcing products in New York. Some might think that a lemon is a lemon, a tomato a tomato, that the products are the same and taste the same but they are not. New York is definitely a food capital, but cooking across countries always provides a challenge or two.
One roadblock comes with finding suppliers who can provide the team with the products they need. For example Tuscan black cabbage or cavolo nero, used in the Ribollita bread and vegetable soup, is not available in the US. The closest plant is dinosaur kale which has a slightly different flavor and texture. It took several days for our NY butcher to locate lamb shanks small enough for our chefs’ requests. Though the team has a regular list of purveyors who we work with year after year, there are always surprises along the way, such as the unavailability of specific cotechino pressed meat brands. Fortunately, the diversity of New York provides many alternative solutions, which continuously reveal learning experiences and discoveries of local, specialized companies.
The event management staff shares, “We’ve found some great suppliers over the years, both big and small, wide-ranging and niche. The majority of items are very easy to source, some are very difficult due to the terroir-like nature of regional Italian cuisine, but we always relish the challenge of seeing how we can draw the Tuscan-ness out of US-sourced ingredients.”
In many food service operations, ordering food has become so easy and streamlined that chefs are able to log in and check a few boxes on supplier websites. There are grocery stores for any missing ingredients and the sourcing of nearly any product is a piece of cake. Each country provides its advantage points. In Italy, suppliers have a firm focus on seasonality. In the US, one finds that the commodity of diversity and variety is plentiful.
The team has been working day and night, but mostly night due to the time difference, to source these ingredients so that only the most authentic of dishes are presented to the guests and participants our upcoming events. This is not an experience the chefs and students will forget; neither will the guests.