Eataly

My class recently took a trip to Eataly in Rome. Eataly looks like a huge warehouse but when you walk in, it’s buzzing with shoppers roaming around the four floors of produce and restaurants.  You know that anyone you find there is a food lover. For me, it was so exciting to walk through the front doors; it made me instantly want to start shopping and go home to start cooking right away.

Inside Eataly 

Eataly is partnered with Slow Food. For those of you who have never heard of Slow Food, it’s a non-profit organization that works to help small farmers get their produce on the market and still keep their products at a competitive price. Slow Food encourages people to buy fresh, locally grown foods versus eating fast food or processed food from the grocery store. It’s hard for small farmers to produce high quality organic produce at reasonable prices because efficient distribution channels are often difficult to find and its hard to compete with farmers who mass produce their products with a high quantity and low quality concept. Slow Food is about making low quantity and high quality possible. They help get the product from the farm to the shelves in the grocery store and help with the marketing for the farmer. That’s where Eataly comes in.

Eataly offers every possible ingredient you can think off. Personally for me, I was so proud of the entire concept of Eataly because it really forces you to realize that everything we put in our mouth was grown by a farmer.  What a lot of people don’t realize is that everything we see in the store started as a seed or was raised by a farmer. I grew up on a farm and still live there today.  All of my life it has frustrated me when people don’t understand where their food comes from. No, it does not magically appear at the grocery store. During the fall my grandpa gets up before dawn and stays out after the sun sets just to harvest all the crops on time. So Eataly was something that I could really connect with. I think that being there and seeing all the different types of food makes visitors appreciate their food just a little bit more.

In addition to all the great produce, Eataly has 23 different restaurants. Each restaurant has a theme, so no matter what kind of mood you’re in when you visit Eataly, you’re sure to find a restaurant just for you. Whether it’s mozzarella, chocolate, pastries, or gelato, there’s a specific restaurant just for that theme. When you plan on going to Eataly make sure you have at least a couple hours to spare and bring your appetite!