In 2022 readers of Conde Nast Traveler named Bologna Italy as the planet’s food capital.
And now you can add deli capital to that city’s honors!
THE birthplace of parmesan cheese, balsamic vinegar, parma ham, tortellini and ragu, the tastes of Bologna can be found on palates worldwide, though Americans may be most familiar with the city’s less haughty fare and deli icon named for the planet's culinary ground zero.
Inspired by the Bolognian delicacy of mortadella, bologna is the final link in America’s food chain, a lunch meat using “everything about the hog but the squeal.”
Mortadella, serves that same purpose for my fiancéeic's native land, that distinction though is all the two products have in common!
Phony Bologna!
Mildly seasoned with none of bologna’s heavy garlic taste or aftertaste mortadella's flavor resides in the meat and fat, making it safer to enjoy mortadella with a carbonated beverage than traditional American bologna.
Mortadella’s natural casing is removed before the meat is sliced thinly and arranged on your bread of choice. Collaborating with the sausage’s fine grinding, these steps bestow a texture on mortadella beyond the bounds of a boloney-eater’s imagination.
Paired with buffalo mozzarella fresh enough to dampen the roll the final link in the Italian food chain provided the vacation’s best bite.
And that’s no bologna!
To make room for the Lactaid an intolerant requires to eat their way across Italy required a purge of my backpack—obviously long overdue.
By no means comprehensive the find reflects the verticals comprising my career, each a unique pigment suspended in a common binder.
Discovered was the final business card of my years behind THE counter, this one likely in the bag and bearing witness at the time #DanCalkins offered to print his company’s logo on my last business card.
THE Opportunist
Returning to “work” after vacationing as a semi-retired brings no stress, since I have little planned for the summer which matches that word’s definition, though I do plan to remain busy.
Included in those plans is a new podcast series in my ongoing coverage of the events at Kelly-Moore.
THE Opportunists will feature executives from three paint manufactures who in the tumult surrounding the Kelly-Moore implosion moved swiftly to create opportunities for their firms, showing a willingness to transform their businesses—with little time for reflection.
In the moments after THE shuttering H I S Coatings, Farrell-Calhoun and Dunn-Edwards Paints each took bold actions to gain market share and the stories of those efforts are among the most compelling of our industry’s recent history.
I want to thank Tony Cox of H I S Coatings, Anthony Ward of Farrell-Calhoun and Monte Lewis of Dunn-Edwards Paints for participating in this series. All three of them did an outstanding job of detailing their efforts, each episode a masterclass in crisis response.
And advance-of-crisis preparation!
Look for the first episode later this month.
