Our Principles
In Italy, food is always best from your own village and from people you know. Squisito use that as our basic principle but first and foremost our food has to taste good!
Squisito is a not-just-for-profit delicatessen which makes Italian food that is fresh, local and seasonal from ingredients that are good, clean and fair. When we can't grow or rear ingredients ourselves we look first to our own locality and our friends since we like to know by first name the person who makes, grows or rears our ingredients.
Squsito make fresh food which means our food reflects the seasons.
Squisito subscribe to the principles Carlo Petrini outlined when he founded Slow Food so we are proud to be winners of a Slow Food Good, Clean & Fair Producer's Bursary to exhibit and demonstrate at the BBC Good Food Show in 2008 and 2010.
Wherever possible Squisito food is made from authentic Italian recipes with ingredients and methods typical to that area but grown or reared locally in England. This is reflected in the fact that over 85% of the ingredients in the food Squisito sell at accredited Farmers Markets is grown, reared and sourced locally. Squisito are the only accredited Italian food producer in the Midlands.
Squisito like to cook Italian food with passione and flair so we like to create new family favourites based on our experiences in Italy. Whilst out heart is in Italy our stomachs are in England so we occasionally adapt our recipes to take advantage of the richness of local ingredients. But we never compromise.
When we are with family in Italy we like to visit the local Bar and sip a Caiphirinha cocktail watching the evening passagiata and listening to the day's chit-chat and family news. Back in rainy England, I recreates the experience with my Caiphirinha Cocktail Sorbet ice cream made with Brazilian cahaça rum, fresh limes and spearmint from our garden. It's Squisito!
Sometimes we copy classic recipes like Pesto Genovese. Squisito Genovese is made from fresh local basil grown by Blackdown Growers on the Fosse Way, fresh pinenuts, Parmesan Reggiano and Italian olive oil and sometimes we make a local English Parsley & Walnut Pesto using English Moss Curled Parsley, walnuts, Lincolnshire Poacher cheese and Welland Valley Extra Virgin Rapeseed Oil. You will not find sunflower oil, potato, cashew nuts, preservatives or any other funny business in our pesto. Squisito food is fresh - pure and simple. If you don't see what you want please ask.
To see what Squisito is all about come and see us at a Farmers Market. Squisito trade at
Kings Heath Farmers Market Birmingham, 1st Saturday of every month
Bristol Slow Food Farmers Market Birmingham, 1st Sunday of every monthKings Norton Farmers Market Birmingham, 2nd Saturday of every month'24 Carrots' Jewellery Quarter Farmers Market Birmingham, 3rd Saturday of every monthMoseley Farmers Market Birmingham, 4th Saturday of every month
The Underground Farmers Market Kilburn, London occassional but extraordinary market!
BigBarn online farmers market - order direct from multiple producers 24/7 x 365 days in one click!
What you read above is a summary of what Squisito is about. However, we have learned that producing food has ethical and social dimensions. It is not for nothing that the Lord's Prayer includes the words "Give us this day our daily bread" since bread and the conviviality of the family table play a fundamental role in human society.
When you look under the bonnet and learn what supermarkets do, where they buy from and how food is processed to look fresh when it can actually be weeks or months old it calls into question the way we live and our disconnect between the land and our social responsibilities to each other and the environment. Whether you are a vegetarian or an eco-warrior food is something we all buy and part of our culture as well as our disappearing heritage.
Our Environmental Sustainability PolicySquisito are practising members of Slow Food so we support biodiversity, locality and artisan skills. We aim to produce food that is good, clean and fair in the wider sense of the words.
Consequently, Squisito food aims to be eco-positive and local. Whilst we prefer to use and grow organic food we are not organic certified since Squisito is too small and would not want to ship less than fresh organic certified ingredients around the world for the sake of a certificate when there is good ethically produced fresh food on our doorstep with lower environmental cost.
Through our food and our work Squisito seek to educate how our food choices affect our environment and community by selecting whom our food is produced by, how it is produced and how much the producer is paid. We like to know our suppliers and customers or ‘co-producers’ on first name terms since that is the best kind provenance there is. For more information read Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair by the Slow Food movement’s founder, Carlo Petrini.
Squisito support biodiversity and sustainability by buying locally, using local breeds and varieties and commission the rearing of rare breeds whereby customers can choose and order rare breed lamb, pork or beef grown by our ‘panel’ of rare breed producers. Squisito “Grow Your Own” meat guarantees the producer a fairer price than any supermarket, encourages less intensive agriculture and lower fossil fuel use, removes the pressure of dates on farmers, improves farm income and improves quality because the customer receives the meat when it is ‘ready’ - all at a fraction or less than supermarket prices.
Squisito can teach customers how to make sausages, bacon, ham or pastrami so that these skills can be passed on to future generations. We believe passing on practical skills encourages sustainability and that passing our skills to our children is the best defence of ours and other species.
Squisito do not generally pre-pack food other than ice cream, flour, yeast or dried herbs and spices. We will happily sell just one sausage or a slice of bread if that is what you need so you get good food without waste. Squisito use biodegradable packaging wherever possible and, in the case of bottles and jars, use those which encourage re-use and offer a deposit equal to the cost of packaging.
At home we recycle 100% of our food waste. Squisito’s business and family waste is so low that we do not fill our non-recyclable domestic rubbish bin once a fortnight despite catering for several hundred customers at Farmers Market on a Saturday in addition to our monthly dinner parties and pizza nights. Any unsold food that our family cannot consume is distributed around our village. We believe that good food is a right and those in need should not be deprived in the name of profit.
Our food is low food miles and what Squisito take from the environment we aim to put back by changing food attitudes and encouraging our customers to cook for themselves to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem caused by agro-industrial food production and the exploitation of natural and human resources.
We therefore encourage you to join the Slow Food movement and consider the fact that every time you enter the doors of a big supermarket, burger chain or clothing store you are effectively voting for who produces your food, where it is produced, what breeds and varieties are produced and what the human and environmental cost is to those countries and ours.
All you have to do is think and practice what you aspire to make change happen.
For more information call Sara Chambers on 01788 833 477 or email sarachambers@mac.com