By Donna Thornton/News Editor
Tena King and T.C. Morgan opened a unique business this fall on Broad Street, one that invites you to sample their products as its staff offers advice and instruction on how to use them.
King’s Olive Oil Company stocks a wide variety of extra virgin olive oils, as well as flavor fused or infused olive oils and basalmic vinegars, along with a number of other specialty food items. All of the vinegars in the store are from Modena, Italy.
“There are fewer that 400 stores like this in the country,” King said, mostly located in tourist towns, and there are none in northeast Alabama.
King and Morgan are excited to offer the olive oils and vinegars for their health benefits. Both contain cancer-preventing polyphenols, and Morgan, King and their staff can help guide buyers to products that offer the best health benefits.
They can help customers pair an infused olive oil with the right basalmic vinegar for cooking and offer a wide variety of recipes to guide you to a more gourmet meal at home.
The products offered are better than what you will find on your grocery store shelves, both Morgan and King said.
King said all the olive oil stocked is six to eight months from its crush date. The oils are imported from two hemispheres, she said.
Morgan said the olives are picked from trees, not shaken off the trees or picked up off the ground.
With olive oils and vinegars from the grocery store, the couple said, there’s no easy way to determine where they came from, how they were harvested or how long ago that harvest and pressing might have occurred.
King’s oils and vinegars are sold in dark bottles, to preserve the health benefits and the freshness of the products. Customers can keep their bottle, wash it and let it dry (for at least 72 hours) and bring it back to the store for $1 off a refill.
The store features a number of specialty pasta and other items – the kind of thing that make great gifts, along with the available gift sets.
King Olive Oil Company will continue to highlight its products with monthly “Forks and Corks” dinners – a five course meal featuring dishes made incorporating combinations of their olive oils and vinegars, served in the dining area of the store in the 600 block of Broad Street.
December’s Forks & Corks dinner menu was:
Antipasti – Baked caprese and olives
Primo – Cioppino (mussels, clams, and shrimp in tomato broth)
Secondo – Olive oil poached fish and orzo
Contorno – Pesto zucchini pasta
Dolce – Pear claufouti
The meal was catered by Local Joe’s, as was the November dinner, which included prosciutto and figs with goat cheese balsamic glaze and lemon olive oil, spinach salad with almonds, cranberries and blood orange vinaigrette, butternut squash soup, braised beef short ribs with vegetables and parsnip puree gremolata and lemon tart.
Each month’s menu will vary, and promises to be out-of-the-ordinary fare.
Tickets are $35 per person, and wine is included with the meal.