Around the World in 26 Days

Today we had a business visit to the Academia Barilla, the largest Italian pasta producer in the world. They own a lot of other Italian food companies as well, so our visit was basically a 5 hour food excursion around Parma, Italy, food capital of Europe. Needless to say, it was amazing.

The first place we went to was the Parmesan cheese factory. We saw how the cheese was curdled and set. Did you know that the best parmesan cheese is 24 months old? And that one circle of cheese is worth 400 euro? There was literally $5 million worth of cheese in one room we visited. Crazy. We also got to taste it, and it was seriously the best cheese I’ve ever eaten. I don’t think I can ever go back to Kraft, which, as our tour guide Eduardo put it, “isn’t even real cheese.”

huge cheese curdler

hundreds of cheese!

so delicious

We next went to a bruschetto production house, which is really thin sliced ham. We saw hundreds of cured pig thighs, which smelled pretty bad. We learned that it takes a year for the thighs to be ready to be cut and eaten. We then got to try some as well, which was basically salted raw ham on bread, but it actually tasted pretty good. Kinda like slimy bacon.

beautiful Italia

It smelled so bad

mmm raw ham

Then we went back to Barilla headquarters and got treated to a four-course meal. The first course was more of that brochette and parmesan cheese, which we were all kind of sick of, so some of us (specifically Tim T. See, I mentioned you!) discreetly put ours into a napkin and into our purses to not seem rude. The second course was really good pasta with mozzarella and tomatoes and the next was a chicken breast with fried tomatoes. We then got some gelato for dessert ;) Pretty good meal overall, especially considering that last year Kristen said they were served octopus!

Lastly we were treated to a tour of the pasta factory, which was HUGE with tons of assembly lines of the different kinds of pasta and packaging. Did you know that they own 50% of the wheat market? We unfortunately weren’t allowed to take pictures of this factory, but it was really cool and we got to try some fresh pasta, which was super good. I’ll have to buy Barilla when I get home :)

Overall, here is what I liked better about Europe than America and here’s what made me appreciate America more:

Europeans have better:

Americans have better:

We’ll see how it all stacks up in Asia. I can’t wait!