Celebrating the Mediterranean lifestyle one delicious dish at a time.
A new customer named Chris visited our outlet store last week looking for a birthday gift for his mother. When we asked how he found us he said he was recently in Ballard dining at Don Curtiss’s wonderful Italian restaurant, Volterra , and he was admiring our little Raffaellesco salt and pepper dishes on the table–the wine steward told him they were from Poggi Bonsi Gifts.
We have logged many miles on the winding roads of central Italy in our search for the perfect products for our web site www.poggibonsigifts.com. We often get tips from other suppliers or people we meet in restaurants or shops. Sometimes these tips lead to something wonderful and other times they lead to a dead end. It took us two years and a few dead ends to find an olive wood supplier.
One of the many perks of our job as importers is the opportunity to meet people from other countries and cultures. Every time we’re in Italy we must go through the region of Umbria to the all-important ceramic town of Deruta, near Perugia–the sister city of Seattle, and each time the story reads differently.
This rich lasgna is so wonderful all your friends will rave. It’s great to serve in the spring when the asparagus is fresh. It makes an elegant pasta course but also works well as an entreé.
On our recent buying trip to France we were exploring the area around Vallauris. We searched for a suitable hotel in Vallauris and Mougin, but they were all either closed for the season, or too expensive. As darkness fell, time was running out, we were cold and wet from the rain earlier in the day and needed a home for the night. We ended up in Antibe at the Hotel Le Collier…
Visiting my husband’s distant cousins in Arezzo has become a tradition on our Italian buying trips. Arezzo is a wonderful town situated on the northeastern corner of the Chianti region of Tuscany.
We were on our first visit to Montefalco to meet with a new Italian linen supplier–Montefalco, Italy is a majestic Umbrian hill town often referred to as the “la ringhiera dell’Umbria” which is translated to mean “the balcony of Umbria”. The town has a rich history in weaving Jacquard linens which we were anxious to add to our European Linen Collection.
It’s the question many a puzzled Italian has asked of us when they hear the name of our import business. We happily reply that it’s because the name is so “musicale” and fun to say!
Traveling around Europe in a cute little car sounds like a lot of fun, but for American entrepreneurs Keli DeRitis and Michelle Codd, every minute on the winding back roads of Italy and France is spent searching for artisan-crafted products to satisfy the savvy customers who visit www.poggibonsigifts.com. The U.S. dollar is keeping their customers at home at the computer, and business is good for this company that brings Europe to America’s door.
Thank you so much! The covered canister arrived and is being displayed on a shelf in my kitchen. The lemon pattern is, for reasons I can’t fully explain, one that lifts my spirits… Barbara Fort Lee, New Jersey
