Italy has a particular way of making food feel inseparable from place. Sun-warmed tomatoes piled high at a market stall, silvery olive groves running across Umbrian hillsides, fragrant herbs growing wild beside the road, peaches heavy with juice, wheels of Parmigiano ageing patiently in Emilia-Romagna and bottles of olive oil glowing almost green-gold in the afternoon light. Its beauty is bountiful, generous and deliciously uncomplicated; a country where the landscape seems to find its way onto the table.
A flight to Italy is always tempting, but a little of that magic can be recreated much closer to home. Eataly London brings together thousands of Italian and locally sourced products beneath one roof at its vast Bishopsgate marketplace, while its online shop offers nationwide delivery. Fill the kitchen cupboards, set a table in the garden or pack a basket and head to the garden: all that is really required is glorious produce and enough time to enjoy it.
The Golden Touch: Olixir Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Great Italian cooking so often begins — and ends — with olive oil. The Olixir Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil 500ml is exactly the sort of pantry staple worth treating as an ingredient in its own right rather than simply something to cook with.
Pour it generously over warm bread, tomatoes and torn mozzarella; finish grilled vegetables with it; or pack a small bottle alongside focaccia for the simplest picnic imaginable. Few things conjure an Italian summer quite so effectively as good bread dipped into a shallow pool of golden extra virgin olive oil.
A Beautiful Finishing Touch: Borgo del Balsamico Satin Rosé
There are ingredients that taste wonderful and others that make the table look beautiful before the bottle has even been opened. Borgo del Balsamico Satin Rosé Edition 100ml belongs firmly in the latter camp.
A delicate counterpoint to olive oil, it lends itself to the fresh, sunlit flavours of summer. Think ripe tomatoes, burrata, strawberries, salads and soft cheeses: dishes requiring very little intervention when the ingredients are good enough to speak for themselves.
Together with a bottle of extra virgin olive oil, it turns even a loaf of bread and a handful of seasonal produce into something that feels considered.
From the Italian Countryside: Alce Nero Organic Wildflower Honey
A jar of Alce Nero Organic Wildflower Honey 700g brings another side of the Italian landscape to the table.
Drizzle it over ricotta for breakfast, spoon it onto thick yoghurt and summer berries or serve it beside a properly aged cheese as part of an antipasti spread. For a picnic, pair honey with figs, walnuts and chunks of Parmigiano for something that requires virtually no preparation but captures that characteristically Italian interplay between sweet and savoury.
It is also the sort of ingredient that survives long after summer has disappeared — a spoonful stirred into tea or poured over toast providing a little reminder of warmer days.
The Perfect Picnic Ingredient: Sangiolaro Tuna Steak in Oil
For a picnic that moves beyond sandwiches, Sangiolaro Tuna Steak in Oil 550g deserves a place in the basket.
Keep things beautifully simple: thick pieces of tuna with ripe tomatoes, cannellini beans, red onion, basil and good olive oil. Spoon it onto crostini, fold it through a salad or serve it alongside boiled eggs and vegetables for an Italian-inspired lunch beneath the trees.
The pleasure is in allowing an excellent ingredient to remain recognisable rather than disguising it beneath too many others — a recurring theme of the Italian table.
A Little White Truffle Luxury
Few ingredients announce themselves quite like truffle. Deep, earthy and unmistakably decadent, its aroma can transform the simplest plate of food.
Eataly’s White Truffle Sauce 180g provides an easy route to that indulgence. Fold a little through warm pasta, spoon it over eggs or use it to turn crostini into something altogether more luxurious.
Then there is Eataly White Truffle Olive Oil 100ml, best thought of as a finishing flourish. A drizzle over risotto, fresh pasta, eggs or creamy burrata is enough; truffle rewards restraint.
For summer entertaining, both are useful reminders that impressive food does not necessarily require hours in the kitchen. Sometimes the difference between everyday and extraordinary is simply what you add at the very end.
Something Sweet: Eataly Milk Chocolate Heart
No Italian gathering should conclude without dolce.
The Eataly Milk Chocolate Heart 250g provides the most playful addition to the basket: a generous chocolate centrepiece made for breaking and sharing.
Build the Italian Summer Table
These ingredients work beautifully alone, but the pleasure of Eataly is in building a table around them.
Add freshly baked focaccia, piles of seasonal fruit, olives and artisan cheese. Tear rather than slice the bread. Bring a wedge of 24-month-aged Parmigiano Reggiano. Pour sparkling water into proper glasses. Open something chilled. Let lunch occupy considerably more of the afternoon than originally intended.
For those who want to go further, Eataly London brings its marketplace together with restaurants, fresh-food counters, bars and a cookery school at its Bishopsgate home, creating a celebration of Italian food culture rather than simply somewhere to shop. Its online store, meanwhile, allows much of that produce to arrive directly at the front door.
Because recreating a taste of Italy does not require a view of Lake Como or a villa in Tuscany. Sometimes it is a table in the garden, sunlight on a bottle of olive oil and good food shared slowly. La dolce vita.
135 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 3YD
