DOWNTOWN GREEN BAY'S SANDWICH SHOP AND FULL SERVICE DELICATESSEN.

Parisi's Delicatessen was founded in 2010 to serve Green Bay delicious Wisconsin artisanal cheeses and superior meats. Whether you want to drop by for a half pound of smoked turkey, or for sandwiches, Parisi's Delicatessen has extraordinary choices for you. Need something Catered? We do that too.

LA FERRE OLIVE OIL FROM CASTELLANETA, ITALY

Just before we opened our Italo-Wisconsin delicatessen we gave some thought to how people sell olive oil in the United States. We knew one thing, we didn't want to offer too many choices. Speaking for ourselves, we are often bewildered by the staggering array of options offered by many shops in the fine foods industry. We always end up choosing something based on price and packaging; but you just don't really know what you're going to get. What we decided was that we wanted to find a single line of olive oil that represented excellence at a relatively affordable price and to just stick with it, keep it simple. So we started looking...

This next part requires a little back story. When I was a student at the University of Bologna in the mid-1990s, I had a friend named Jody who ended up marrying an Italian man and staying there. She and her family finally returned to the United States in 2010, about the time that we were working on opening Parisi's. One afternoon we met up in Milwaukee, and she told me that her husband's best friend had recently started an olive oil company in Castellaneta, just outside of Taranto on the West coast of Puglia. I was definitely interested in checking it out. Why? Because Puglia is a magical word to me.

Of all the Italian regions, Tuscany seems to get the best press. And it is inarguably a fantastic place. But Puglia is my favorite. In part, this is because it's the region that I know the best. I lived there for a year as a child while my father was doing anthropological fieldwork. I was a first grader in a one room schoolhouse in a tiny village outside of a tiny town. As you can imagine, this left a deep impression on me. To this day, I'm pretty nostalgic about the smells and tastes of Puglia. So, I wrote to Jody's friend Luca Esposito to see if I could actually get the oil.

After a little correspondence, Luca sent me a small case of his family's olive oils. I was deeply impressed. First, he had several single varietals—each with its own distinct character—his blends were well balanced, and his infused olive oils were amazing. More importantly, they had had an undefinable Pugliese character that I recognized from my childhood. I knew that I wanted them in the store. But there was a problem, Le Ferre didn't have a US importer. I looked into getting into the importing business. It turns out that there's a good reason that there aren't many micro-importers: shipping costs really add up. It just wasn't practical.

Recently, I was dusting off some old ideas and I decided to write to Luca to see if he'd found a US importer. It turns out that in the past year, his olive oils had been discovered by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, and therefore there'd be a surge of interest. There were now several companies importing Le Ferre. A few minutes later I was talking to an Italian guy named Tony in Brooklyn, and a week later I have a small selection in the store.

Everything's cold pressed, extra virgin, and perfect. We'll be getting more in over time, but we're pleased to have finally found what we'd wanted from the beginning.

ABOUT US

The story begins with the simple desire for a great, simple, turkey sandwich on a Saturday evening and the realization that there was nowhere to go.

Within minutes the concept for Parisi's Delicatessen was born.

THE DELI CASE

The deli case is the locomotive of the delicatessen (and that's about as far as the metaphor goes. There is no caboose of the delicatessen). So what's in ours? Glad you asked. In our deli case, you will frequently find:

Carr Valley Cheeses, LaValle, Wisc. →

Upland's Pleasant Ridge Reserve →

Evalon and chevre from Chilton's award winning LaClare Farms. →

Wisconsin Sheep Dairy Co-op's Dante.

Bolzano Artisanal Salamis from Milwaukee.

Underground Meat Collective Charcuterie from Madison.

Prosciutto di Parma, the real stuff from Italy.

The best smoked turkey in town.

And many other things...