Valoroso Foods

Last year Valoroso Foods was caught tampering with the dates on their products. Food was being served to people that was significantly past its due date, and the shop was briefly closed for health code violations. Unilocalers ought to know this – the story appeared on Castanet and can be confirmed.

What kind of Italian market doesn’t stock 28 oz cans of plum tomatoes? It has some cheese and some cured meats and olive oil but no high quality San Marzano tomatoes?
Bummer.

I had to re-​edit my review. What I thought was going to be an epic Italian store turned out to be sort of a disappointment. First, where do I begin?
1) The prices are outrageous. A single ball of imported bufula mozzarella is almost $ 10. I gawked when I saw that. Also, I THOUGHT they made the mozz on site by importing just the milk, which would be much better since bufula mozz isn’t very stable on the shelf, but, nope, it’s imported. So, let’s compare to Costco where you can get 5 bufula mozz balls imported from Italy for just $ 13. Yep. I can’t attest to which one is better, because there is NO way I’m going to pay $ 10 for ONE mozz ball, but, they are both imported, so they are probably going to be the same. Not only was the mozz expensive, nearly everything was expensive. I bought 200 grams of pancetta (which looks great), 500 grams of caved aged Pecorino (can’t tell if it’s Sardinian but it’s definitely not Romano), a bag of spaghetti, and a bunch of not so great looking Italian parsley. Total cost? $ 22 CAD. Yep. $ 22 freaking CAD. In the States, I could buy twice as much for that amount.
2) Customer service. My wife and I both agree that the young girls working there are borderline bitches. Not friendly nor very helpful, and definitely one of them was definitely not intelligent. When I ordered the pancetta, the girl asked me how I wanted it. I said, just give me a chunk, I’ll cut it on my own. She said she needed to slice it, so, Bacon Style? I said, ok, I’m planning to cut them up as lardons, so, that could work. She starts slicing them, and I look at her cutting these insanely thing pieces of pancetta. It’s nearly see through. I would say she was going for the prosciutto look, but I think that’s doing a disservice to prosciutto. I stopped her immediately and said, «hey hey hey! That’s WAY too thin.» She responds, «Well, I asked bacon style?» I retorted, «I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen bacon THAT thin.» I also said I was going to cut these up as LARDONS. How do you expect me to cut those up as LARDONS??? And, if you don’t know what LARDONS are, ASK! To her credit, she did make thicker cuts and only gave me the thicker cuts. I also inquired about the Caputo pizzaria flour, because I was told they sold it by the kilo. It turns out, they don’t. They sell smaller blue bags of caputo flour, but I was NOT sure if they were similar to the pizzaria flour. Anyways, they did not know, and in fact, told me the completely wrong thing by saying the red small bags are the pizzaria flour and the blue small bags are the all purpose type. No, that’s not true. But, whatever. At this point, I have no desire to buy a 25 kg bag of flour before my trip back to California.
Anyways, my problem with these people is the lack of passion and care. They are just there, looking bored as all hell, and not giving a crap about the product they sell.
3) Quality of the product. They sell what looks to be OK product. Their San Marzano tomatoes look pretty bad, though. I’m surprised they don’t have Centos since that product is quite ubiquitous and good. Their pecorino tasted quite off, but I don’t know if it’s because I’m used to Romano and got some weird aged pecorino. However, my mother in law has said she’s never liked the pecorino at this place and much rather get it at the Mediterranean Market. Parsley was not good, and I’ve gotten fresher and better looking parsley at the regular markets. Pancetta, though, looks quite good. I will have to update when I make my carbonara.
So, there you go. I wouldn’t avoid this place at ALL costs. They may have some really good hard to find cheeses. They do have big bags of Caputo pizzaria flour (this is a must for Neopolitan style pizzas), which is hard enough to find on its own. They probably have other good Italian products. However, after my cursory glance and experience here, I will probably not return.