Chef Daniel Boulud calls Lou Di Palo one of the seven wonders of New York. Boulud, owner of the black heels and ties restaurant named after himself on the Upper East Side, likes a good food story. Especially when your name is attached to it. Di Palo is full of food stories. His family owns Di Palo’s, a specialty Italian foods shop in Little Italy that is more than just a store – it’s a family owned importer of little edible Italian secrets.
Di Palo is the kind of guy that doesn’t have a hard time getting Martin Scorsese to write a forward in his first book, the "Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy." Like Scorsese, Di Palo’s an Italian-American artisan. Family’s been running the business for over 100 years. He’s been working there for 40. His passion: cheese, olive oil, balsamic vinegar. His masterwork, though, hangs in the dairy aisle.
This is where the story-telling comes in. Everyone knows that food is where people gather to tell their tales. Di Palo’s stories come from the gathering of the food, the discovery of where it was made. It’s not so much about the taste, but what makes it taste that way in the first place. So it all inevitably comes down to the air and the water and the grass and the sheepherder he’s met that led him to the perfect little farm, that made the perfect little cheese, somewhere south of Trentino.
No matter where you go, Italian food can be found on a menu somewhere. New York Italian food guru... [+]
“I met this herdsman near Madonna di Campiglio that takes care of cows. He was herding them down the mountain,” he says. “They were all Italian brown cows, a well known breed, and they are coming down from the dolomites because winter was coming," he says about a mountain range in the Italian Alps. "I was hiking up the mountain just to see those cows because – hey, I’m the cheese man – and I wanted to see the source. I see the herdsman, I wave him down. There’s fog rolling off the mountains. The guy can’t believe how much I know about cows so he takes me to them. We chat about cheese. He tells me how the cow’s milk is nourished by that mountain water that they get from the rivers and from the grass. No cow in the world feeds from a source like this. He hands me the lead cow’s bell as a souvenir; it dated back to the 19th century.”
I met with Di Palo in Rhode Island at the annual Newport Mansions Wine & Food Festival in September. We sat outside the Hyatt Regency on Goat Island to discuss Italian foods, politics, the Italian economy. Di Palo was on hand as an expert on pairing Italian wine with Italian cheese and meats. He was part of the event's A-list which included Martha Stewart and PBS celebrity chef Sarah Moulton. But Di Palo was the most accessible. We chatted again on a cool evening at the Marble House mansion in Newport at a wine tasting event. And lastly, at Newport’s upscale Pier 41 North, where the M2 slip was taken up by the ARGYLL, a $100,000 a week luxury liner.
I asked him for some advice on pairing wine with cheese. Of course, everything was Italian.
Lou Di Palo at Christies Pier in Newport, RI. Lou calls himself the "cheese man". The New York small... [+]
“My favorite cheese is a piave,” he says. It’s a hard cow’s milk cheese that comes from the Italian Alps region of Veneto. It’s named after the Piave River. “I met with this farmer up there named Nisio Paganin. He worked with a cooperative called Agriform. I wanted to meet the cheese maker, see him making cheese by hand like I do. I have this image in my head of this old world craftsman just slaving away for the love it, you know? But it ended up being a computer that did most of the heavy lifting,” he says, not lamenting the fact. “Really, the easiest way to judge cheese is by the percentage of people who try it and like it. I like piave...with a Valpolicella Superior.”
Di Palo doesn’t name brands. He doesn’t want to turn one supplier against another. But his Italian “cheese road tour” is an expert’s guide not found in stores. Here's a short list:
Cheese: Asiago Pressato (20 days aged)
Region: Veneto
Wine: Cantine Miali, Firr
Region: Puglia
Grape: Fiano
Color: Yellow-white with greenish highlights.
Like most of Europe, many will prefer to mix the foods and wine of the same region. These are two different regions, but in general, a bold white wine pairs well with Asiago, Di Palo says.
Cheese: Asiago D’Allevo Oro Del Tempo (three months to one year)
Region: Veneto
Wine: Sartori di Verona, Ferdia Bianco Veronese
Region: Veneto
Grape: Garganega
Color: White, dry.
Cheese: Piave Stravecchio Oro del Tempo (10 months)
Region: Veneto
Wine: Querceto di Castellina, L’Aura Chianti Classico
Region: Tuscany
Grape: Mostly Sangiovese, but also four lesser known varieties
Color: Red.
“This wine is produced in a region where the first chianti was made back in the 1600s,” Di Palo says. “This is my favorite cheese. And this one in particular is very high tech.”
Cheese: Grana Padano Stravecchio Oro del Tempo (22 months)
Region: Veneto
Wine: Tua Rita Perlato del Bosco, Rosso Toscana
Region: Tuscany
Grape: 75% Sangiovese, 25% Cabernet Savignon, 5% Syrah,
Color: Red.
There are over 400 different types of cheeses in Italy, with the Grana Padano being the most storied. It has been made in northern Italy for over 1,000 years and was made to withstand the harsh temperature changes on long sea voyages. The water that feeds the cows here comes from the Po River, where most of Italy’s dairy production comes from, just south of the Dolomite mountains.
“The story goes like this,” Di Palo says, leaning over a small table outside the Hyatt. “French monks took over the land there around 1,000 years ago, having migrated after the Barbarians came and wiped the inhabitants there between 400 and 600 AD. These monks reclaimed the land, put cows on it for milk. But with all that excess milk production, they started making cheese from the skimmed milk. They’d sit there and take the curd, cut it down to the size of a grain, and they ended up with this very dense cheese. When you try it, you’ll notice the crunch to it. That’s amino acids all clumped together. And if I want to sound like a foodie, dare I say that it’s what excites your pallet,” he says. “But what’s cool about it is the history. This is a taste of Italian history. No…European history.”
These are not expensive items, but they are rare finds. Specialty stores like Di Palo's will carry most of them. The wines can be found through on line retailers like Italianmade.com
Whether in Moscow or Hong Kong, Italian food is somewhere on the menu. And somewhere on the plate, there will be cheese. For Di Palo, the best Italian cheese is not measured by its taste, but by the quest to find it, and – to some extent -- the stories that are behind their production.
Small vineyard Italian wines on display at Pier 41 North in Newport, RI during the annual Newport... [+]
Serving Mozzarella, Stile Italiano
Fresh rounds of mozzarella need very little help. They should be as fresh as possible, best when not refrigerated. Slice it in half, depending on the size of the cheese ball, and hit it with a dash of extra virgin olive oil and sea salt. Don’t cut it with a serrated blade because it ruins the texture. Different shapes of mozzarella serve different purposes. The drier treccia style is best shredded into salads. The creamy burrata one is best topped with fresh tomatoes, or some preserved, diced peppers and olive oil. The little bite-sized ones: roll them up in prosciutto, marinate them in oil and seasoning or douse them with white vinegar and eat at room temperature. -- paraphrased from Di Palo's Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy."
The Italian Meat Market
Salame or salume? One is a meat. The other is the generic term for cold cuts. These are some of the best Italy has to offer, and are rare finds here in the states, says Marco Mocellin, U.S. sales manager for Parmacotta U.S.A. With New York's Indiana Jones of Italian food looking over his shoulder, Mocellin gives FORBES readers his picks for the finest in Italian salame. Or salume. Either way, Italian food historian Di Palo approves after leading with, "Once, my wife and I were in this restaurant in Puglia. And the waiter comes up to me and..."
Okay. Let's eat...
Prosicutto Toscano DOP
The DOP means it comes from a designated area of the country recognized to be the main production zone for that particular item. The Prosciutto Toscano costs anywhere from 30% to 130% more the prosciutto generally found in neighborhood grocery stores. "If you're buying it in New York, it'll cost $28 a pound. In Colorado, about $16," says the wild-haired Mocellin over drinks at Pier 41.
Culatello Di Zibello
This comes from a specific pig breed not available in the U.S. It's even rare in Italy, going for about $50 a pound. "It's a part of the prosciutto, but cured. What makes it expensive is that in order to produce this meat, you have to lose a lot of the other meat on the bone to do it," Mocellin says.
Prosciutto de Parma
Most of this meat can be found deboned. The trick is getting it with the bone in. "The bone in means the product continues to age like a fine wine. The older the better," Mocellin says.
Strolghino
A salame cut from a different part of the pig's leg than traditional salame. Rare, but yours at $16 a pound.
Violino de Capra
It's called violino, which means violin, because the way the meat is held on the bone by a chef when cutting is similar to how a violinist holds his instrument. This goat meat is very thin and not sold in the U.S. Look for it on your next trip to Italy. It sells for around $30 to $40 a pound.
