****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I got this as a gift for my daughter when I stayed with her. It arrived in a regular box, so she could not see what it was. When opened there is a beautiful beige box with a red ribbon on it, perfect because it did not need any gift wrapping. The box is very well packaged, all the pasta and the glass jars were intact. It comes with two bucatini (I had never tried these) and two rotini (they call it fusilli), two jars of sauce and one olive oil. Since we had never had the bucatini, my daughter cooked that one first. The cooking instructions on the individual packages are in Italian, but there is a booklet in the box with English instructions, and it is pasta, so it was not hard to find the time on the package to follow. Important to do follow the package, because the bucatini only cooks for 3-4 minutes! the fusilli cooking time is comparable to other supermarket pasta.Now for the sauce.... YUMMMMMMMM! my only complain here is that we needed more of it, as we like our pasta super saucy! She cooked some Italian sausage and crumbled it on top of the plate of pasta & sauce, but it would have been fine without it as well.Kind of pricey for every day, but good for when you want something fancier than supermarket fare.Purchased as an anniversary gift for my god daughter, who is a trained chef - the whole family loved it! She said it could be the "get it again" gift! Could tell the pasta was excellent quality from the moment she laid eyes on it.my bad - was looking for another gift package - - we are goodI love the product!! I’m only into authentic Italian food!! This gourmet Italian food was excellent!! I will buy another supply soon!The pasta was fun and very good. I always love a high quality olive oil.Good value for the money, very tastyThe "Premium" gift box is truly that, IMO. I was skeptical that it would be worth the cost, and only you can decide if it is to you, but I'd say that the food items alone are probably in the $90-$100 range if you'd buy them off the shelf at the store. I say that because every one of them is a quality product. Add in the quite nice gift box that everything is in, plus the internal gift boxes on some of the bottles and the booklet that describes everything included, and it starts to become a better value than it might originally appear to be.The olive oil is one of the best that I've had. I admit that I'm not an olive oil expert, but I use it often as a dressing on lettuce with just the oil, salt, and pepper. So, I definitely taste the oil. This one has a nice flavor and finish to it. Not sure if I'd call the finish "peppery," but perhaps. Some olive oils have almost no flavor at all, but this one does, and others that I've purchased with this good of flavor are in the $20 range for a bottle this size.The taralli are pretty darn excellent snacks, and I can taste and feel the quality in them. These could have been home made.The biscotti seems true to the form and is delicious, although the crunchiness of biscotti isn't my preference. The taste, though, is utterly fantastic.The boiled peppers aren't really my thing, but they are nicely presented. Please note that there is a plastic piece just under the lid on top of the peppers that, at least to me, was completely invisible because it was submerged in the oil. You'll need to pull that piece out first.The chilli dressing tastes good, but my bottle leaked at some point before getting to me. The leak was surprising because the lid seemed to be on tight, and the outer seal on the lid was intact. Perhaps this has happened before, because that was the only container in the entire gift box that came inside of a bubble wrap bag (that bag might have just been there to help it fit in the box it was in, but perhaps they've leaked before).The orange honey is also tasty and definitely comes across to me as an artisanal item. I've tried several kinds of honey over the years, and this is a thicker variety and not like the clover honey from the grocery store that many folks are used to. (Not bashing clover honey...I love that kind, too.)I have yet to try out the balsamic vinegar or pistachio cream, but based on the other products and the overall look of those two, I am assuming that they will be just as good as the rest.So, while I wasn't expecting the premium gift box to be worth the cost, I certainly changed my mind after getting it.I got this gift box as a Christmas present for my parents. They have pretty much everything they want, and so this type of consumable gift is well appreciated. The presentation is really nice, it all comes in a solid white box with a red bow tie holding it shut. Inside the box everything is packed very snugly, with low probability of anything breaking in shipping even though half the items come in glass. The actual food is an interesting variety of things, from oil and vinegar to crackers and cookies. It all seems pretty fancy and a bit different from what we usually have, though I have no doubt that it's marked up fairly significantly.
