Gastronomic cultural EVOOlution of the virgin olive oil consumption model at the restaurant

Gastronomic experience can be a factor of motivation to improve the quality of extra virgin olive oil served at the restaurant. The “new” consumer is a very complex and demanding figure, who seeks in the consumption of food products not only a means to satisfy food needs, but experiences, emotions, feelings, service, nature, culture, etc. The quality requirements do not only concern the chemical-physical and organoleptic components of the product, but also the hedonostic ones, ie those related to the health aspects, the quality of the territory of origin, the typicality, the respect of the environment by the production processes used, respect for animal welfare, the ethical content of the product, etc. He is demanding in terms of information on the features of the product and requires greater guarantees on its characteristics and/or on the production processes used. All this seems to highlight the presence of potential unsatisfied needs around which it is possible to build paths of development of the offer able to satisfy them, especially at the restaurant, where cultural, emotional and multi-sensory satisfaction of food can be easily “discovered”. This is the right time to change the marketing of extra virgin olive oil at the restaurant, because extra virgin olive oil is an element that embodies the different aspects of the expected and perceptible quality of a food: taste, sensory, knowledge, sacredness, syncretism, health, history, naturalness and authenticity. Tasting a high quality oil, discovering the complexity of the aromas released by the contact with the warm dishes and the gustatory and kinesthetic perceptions that harmoniously interact by balancing the sensory profile of the other ingredients, is comparable to the emotion of a blind man when recovers his sight. From that moment, as the blind man will not be able to tolerate returning to the oblivion of darkness, the guests that tasted a high quality extra virgin olive oil can not tolerate returning to the banality of a fat that anoints without seasoning.