Ryan’s Place

Vom Fass is a specialty food store that sells very unique oils and vinegars.  I went to their store on University Ave. last night for their very first tasting event.

I got there at about 6:30 and the place was moderately full.  A few chairs were scattered around, but not enough for everyone to sit on.  I guess that’s ok, as most of the time we were standing anyway.  They started with a little overview of the store and mentioned the things we’d be tasting: caprese salad on toast, basmati rice, roasted vegetables, fruit salad, and a tart.  They also had (tiny) wine tastings.

The goal was to take each of those foods and try the different oils and vinegars on them.  The toast was very good wtih balsamic vinegar as well as a white truffle oil.  For the rice they had us focus on nut oils.  I found that the pumpkin and almond oils were best (and you needed to add a bit of salt to really taste any of it the way you should).  For the vegetables, they didn’t put enough out right away for everyone to have some.  So, by the time I got some, everyone else was milling around waiting for the next course.  Nonetheless, just about any oil or vinegar was good on those.

The fruit salad was very simple: oranges, pineapple, melon, strawberry.  A honey vinegar was really good with the orange slices, and an older balsamic was great on strawberries.  The tart was served with a scoop of ice cream.  The tart itself was perfectly fine without adding anything to it, so I added a bit of three oils to the ice cream.  It sounds odd, but oil on ice cream is actually very good.  Pistachio oil ($19.99/100ml!) was amazing on it.  It made the plain vanilla ice cream taste like pistachio ice cream.  I wanted to buy some right there, but held off.

They provided a gift bag before we left as well.  It included a sampling of three oils (including the pumpkin oil), three vinegars (including an excellent fig one), some chocolates, a recipe, and a 10% off coupon.  I enjoyed the experience enough to go back for another tasting at some point.  They have some specialty spirits (whisky, grappa, eau di vie) that I’d love to try, and I wouldn’t mind another gift bag either.  If you get the chance, I suggest stopping by at some point to check it out and try some things.