Perhaps some of us accompanied our grandmother or parent into this store in NY. It closed for good April 2, 1999. I used to reliably order by mail cotecchino sausage there. The link in the footer still takes you to their facebook page.
I recently watched a 20/20 program about how the mafia is diluting olive oil by mixing it with other vegetable oils and selling it as 100%. Recently I read another article where taste testing was done on common olive oils in the super market. One I remember that did not rate well was Pompeii. However, Trader Joe’s Virgin Olive Oil made with Kalamata olives from Spain did well. It costs $8.99.
While Snopes points out that the test, conducted in California, was misquoted, other studies including an investigation that the New York Times published last year say that olive oil they tested wasn’t exactly as advertised.
“Consumers pay higher prices to dip their breads and douse their salads in extra virgin olive oil. However, out of the eleven brands tested, six didn’t pass the lab’s stringent tests to meet the “extra virgin” standard. The lab in Australia performed chemical tests on the oil as well as sensory testing by trained humans to determine the flavor profile.
While they didn’t name which oils failed the tests, here’s a list of brands that they say passed:”