I know how important it is to buy fresh, local and seasonal produce, but confession time: I am That Girl. The one who buys asparagus imported from Thailand. The one who bitterly chews her way through a crappy apple, because it was the cheapest. The one who covertly buys the cheese that expires the next day, because Coles have it for 80% off.
An evening with the food, wine, and beer suppliers to Vapiano may have changed my future purchasing habits. The Albert Lane pizza and pasta joint proudly use local, Queensland-based businesses for their vegies, meats, cheeses, olives, and drinks.
Kellie Jensen from Jensens Market Supplies gave an example of just how fresh the produce Vapiano uses is: “These tomatoes were picked this morning, and delivered this afternoon.” Indeed, you can taste a difference when the fruit and vege is fresh, and hasn’t been sitting on the shelf for weeks.
I scoffed cheese and olives from Fino Food and Wine, and loved the fresh and light taste of the ricotta. The milk for these cheeses is sourced directly from the farm. It’s like every time your teeth sink into a fetta cube, you can hear a cow mooing. Very fresh.
I also learned some valuable tips for beer and food matching from Andrew Gowdie, from the James Squire Brewery. Andrew comapred a lager to a white wine, and an ale to a red wine. From there, he recommended something like the James Squire Golden Ale to wash down the pizzas and pastas we chowed down on for dinner.
I’ve had Vapiano’s pizza before, and was pleased to see it was still damn good. I love the crust on these pizzas – to me it is absolutely perfect. I was also delighted to try the white sauce-based pizza, which I fell in love with when I first had it in New York. I’ve found white pizzas few and far between in Australia, so it is awesome that now I know I can get my fix at Vapiano.
To finish on a sweet note, we tried a dessert calzone with chocolate, berries, and some of that fresh ricotta. While I loved this ricotta, I didn’t like it in the calzone. Perhaps because I am a filthy sugar whore and it wasn’t sweet enough.
So it would seem that local and fresh food, that’s in transit for a minimum of time before it hits your plate, is often much better. This will hopefully mark the end to me picking the woody strands of month-old asparagus out of my teeth.
Vapiano
Italian Restaurant and Bar
Albert Lane
Brisbane CBD
(07) 3221 4933
