I hate it when corruption invades my restaurant dining

[DFW]

In many restaurants on Europe (and in the US and elsewhere), depending on what kind of restaurant it is, you sometimes get a dish of olive oil to dip bread in while waiting for your food. Sometimes, it's so good, you don't bother with an appetizer, and just get refills on the olive oil.

I just got this news today from the small health food place in my little Rheinland town.

Three of the big manufacturers of olive oil in the European Union have lobbied for, and successfully gotten introduction of, a new rule that olive oil may no longer be served in a dish at the table of restaurants, but must be served in closed, sealed small bottles. Guess who just happens to sell olive oil in those sized bottles? Why, just by coincidence, the big olive oil producers that lobbied to have this rule introduced. If not rescinded, it becomes EU law starting in 2014. I suppose expensive restaurants can comply without suffering, but the smaller ones will either have to pass on the extra cost of the small bottles to the diners, or do away with the olive oil altogether. This may not cause a stir in Poland or Scandinavia, but in countries like Greece, Italy, Spain and France, it is a slap in the face of over half of all places that serve food, as well as their food culture in general.

I'm sure there will be a push to get this rule rescinded before it takes place, but it will probably go nowhere, as the costs are too big for any protest to bear. Only publicity would do the trick, and that takes a cooperative media who would rather report on royal weddings and sports car races.

Europe is not always the paradise some like to make it out to be *sigh*

[olddots]

1. I'm for zero population grouth

?????????????????

[Call Me Wesley]

2. "It's a good thing for the consumer,

as he can be now sure about what olive oil is in the container," or so.

I've read about it today, and wondered why it's just olive oil and not all the other open products you may find waiting there on a restaurant table:



It's not even a health concern but a strict concern that the major distributors actually have their olive oil on the tables. As you said, it'll be the small businesses suffering. The first class restaurants have their own brands.

Sure, make more small plastic bottles so we can litter more with each dish.

Europe is a paradise. A paradise for bureaucracy and laws about everything.

[Major Nikon]

4. I've seen lots of restaurants that refill name brand bottles with other products

If this was going on with olive oil it would make the law seem reasonable.

[DFW]

7. Restaurants seldom if ever serve the olive oil in bottles of any size

They bring it out in dishes. Just like you do not expect to be served toilet bowl water when you ask for a glass of water, you do not expect to get served contaminated olive oil when you get served a dish of olive oil with your bread at restaurants. Anyone can fill up a bottle with something inferior, be it water, wine, olive oil or balsamico. No one at a restaurant feels cheated by a dish of olive oil because no one ever orders it by brand in the first place. Like the glass of tap water, it is served generically.

The maddening thing about this is that no effort was even made to conceal that the new rule was promoted by the three big olive oil producers here in the EU, and everyone knew it would benefit them most. And yet it STILL got through.

[Call Me Wesley]

9. I don't know where you eat out,

but I would ask to look into the kitchen as well while your dinner is made. In the end, it comes all to this:

[Major Nikon]

12. Mine comes out of my end completely different

Just sayin'

[DFW]

17. Except for brief trips back Stateside

I usually eat out in places somewhere between the eastern coast of the Atlantic and the Urals. I promise you it doesn't all come to that. Besides, my wife is a master chef on her own, and we don't eat out unless it's a place that makes stuff she is unfamiliar with. The olive oil thing hit home because one of our favorite places is a small family-owned Greek place about 100 meters from our house.

[DFW]

5. Of course it's not about health

It's not like there has been an epidemic wave of people poisoned by tainted olive oil at restaurants in the EU. It's all about a small cartel of producers monopolizing their market position at the expense of all the rest of Europe.

The EU, a great idea brought about in the beginning with DeGaulle and Adenauer sitting down together after World War II and trying to devise a scheme where the two countries would never again fight a war against each other. In this, they succeeded. The notion of France and Germany fighting another war against each other is completely inconceivable to the people of both countries.

However, like Europe loves to do, it has let bureaucrats and corruption pervert the original idea, and all this to the detriment of the masses and to the benefit of a few large companies. Letting Romania and Bulgaria into the EU was a terrible idea unless you were a big conglomerate looking to fire a few thousand highly paid workers in the west and open up the same plant in the east to pay the local workers 70% less in local wages. It didn't always work out. Nokia, the cell phone maker, had a huge factory in Bochum in the German Ruhr area. They built a factory in newly minted EU member Romania and closed the Bochum plant down, putting a few thousand Germans out of work. The Romanian plant turned out such lousy product that Nokia closed it down three years later and moved production to China. Romania makes no more defective Nokia phones, but it can now export its surplus of poor and organized crime westward--Schengen membership starting Jan. 1, 2014--and still try to lure western manufacturers eastward.

At the start of the EU, the bureaucrats in Brussels were devising rules and regulations for everything. They even decided the dimensions of the apple. In Denmark, they grow an apple that is a little smaller than apples elsewhere. The EU told them they were no longer allowed to call them apples. The Danes told them that maybe they didn't want to be in this EU after all. The idiot bureaucrats relented--I guess the southern European apple lobby didn't have as much financial clout as the olive oil producers.

The only thing I can say is that at least it's not starting a war for commercial purposes to help out a few companies, such as Halliburton getting back on its feet from contracts Cheney had them get after invading Iraq. But it is similar: blatant corruption, tied to bribery. It's all the more maddening because everyone knows it.

[Call Me Wesley]

10. I'm not disagreeing with you.

DeGaulle and Adenauer (both characters I'm not fond of,) kind of had to come up with this idea. But that was in the early fifties. It was a great idea and necessary for the time, and I think it's still necessary. But when I read about a Brussel's EU law such as the apple or the curves of a banana it obviously became perverted and part of George Orwell's '1984.'

As one living in Europe but not the EU, I was a strong supporter of Switzerland joining the EU in 1992. I thought it was a good thing; the right thing to do. Now, as of 2013, I welcome the Schengen-Agreement but would advise against joining the EU. Of course, we can't escape - we very well suffered from the Euro-crisis and Switzerland's Federal Reserve put billions into establishing a fixed par with the Euro.

We're going off-tangent here. But yes, olive oil laws sure don't help it. I mean, do I know if there's actually 'Maggi' in the bottles on the table?

How's the weather there? We're drowning here.

[DFW]

15. My outfit has a small office in Geneva, run by a local guy

He was always against Switzerland joining the EU, and is furious at their joining Schengen. Since joining Schengen, there are hoards of Romanians (both Gypsies and ethnic Romanians) in Geneva, fanning out to stand in groups on every street corner and traffic island to sell stolen stuff, ask for handouts, or do forced begging. The degree of crime, both violent and just normal theft, has risen exponentially, and when Romania and Bulgaria join Schengen in January it will get worse. Geneva used to be an (almost boring) island of tranquility. Now, it looks like it never will be again. Swiss companies like cheap labor, too, but the Swiss people don't like giving up their way of life for the sake of the stockholders of ten large companies.

The weather here sucks, by the way. It has been unseasonably cold and very grey. The sun is out today for the first time since I don't know how long. Maybe all the melting arctic ice has diluted or diverted the Gulf Stream, which usually has warmed up western Europe by now. If the summer suddenly turns brutally hot, we'll know. We don't even have an air conditioner in out house. Last year, we almost considered it, but we usually take off for the States for a month and a half in the summer, so I'll probably miss the worst of it.

[R B Garr]

3. Wow, that's like not serving butter with bread unless it's sold in 1/2 pound quantities

at the table. How ridiculous. What are the customers supposed to do with the unused portions of the small bottles, take it home? That's called grocery shopping if you have to take bottels of product home with you, not restaurant dining.

I will say, however, that after having visited Mario Batali's Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles, we had a very simple bread appetizer topped with olive oil that was divine. It seemed easy enough to duplicate at home, except that we didn't know the brand of olive oil, and it had to be the absolute best olive oil I've ever come across. I'm sure it was expensive. That's the only thing that I can think of that set that simple bread appetizer apart was the quality of the oil. Of course, I could have just asked (and I plan to some day when I go back), which seems like the best option for consumers who are actually interested in the olive oil brand!

[DFW]

6. There are huge differences in the quality of olive oil here in Europe

I get mine in 5 liter jugs directly from a farm in Spain. The same farm produces olive oil commercially and it gets sold at half the price I pay for my olive oil. What do you think happens to the stuff that is available commercially before it gets distributed to stores? They dilute it with oil from Tunesia and farms that are less careful with their quality control.

I can't have butter at all (serious cholesterol issues, heart stents already in place, etc), so the quality of the olive oil we use is of literally vital importance to me.

[R B Garr]

8. I was going to mention the possibility of mixing olive oils,

but wasn't sure if that would be an intelligent question (i.e., do olive oils even mix without it being obvious? I've never tried.) They do from what you're describing. What if they want to do that in a restaurant and create their own "brand," so to speak. I guess this law stops them, especially if their motive is purely to dilute the quality.

Interesting thread topic!

[DFW]

13. Restaurants don't market their own brand as a rule

In supermarkets, if you read the label closely, you'll usually see "may contain olive oil from Tunisia, Greece, Italy, Spain...." or other sources. Pure, one-source olive oil is unusual, and great-tasting one-source olive oil is almost a rarity. My friend who gets me me 5 liter containers from Catalonia knows a small producer in Crete whose half-liter bottles cost over ten euros. You don't cook with that stuff, you save it for your most precious salads or for dipping freshly baked bread into.

There are bad-tasting commercially sold mixtures, but there are also half-way decent ones. What I find so awful is the fact that three big producers can basically pay off a few guys in the European Commission, and suddenly their wish becomes law. It's as if Poland Spring paid off the Secretary of Agriculture to issue a decree that no water other than bottled water (in a bottle size only Poland Spring makes) may be served at restaurants throughout the United States. They get away with this crap because no one would ever believe they could ever get away with this crap. Like the Germans cynically say, "Frechheit siegt."

[Demoiselle]

11. If we can assume that some oil will be left in the bottle by most customers...

...then it seems to me that this rule makes restaurants pay for more oil than they use...and wastes oil as well. Or am I wrong?

[DFW]

14. No, you're right

Last edited Sun May 19, 2013, 04:29 AM - Edit history (1)

And the smaller the bottle, the more that will be wasted. The rule, as I understand it, is that all bottles must be sealed, so an opened bottle can no longer be offered to the next guests.

*on edit--according to an article on the subject, the bottles can't even be glass--they have to be of disposable plastic!

[Dragonbreathp9d]

16. Link?

[DFW]

18. From the local news here:

http://www.deutsch-tuerkische-nachrichten.de/2013/05/476138/neues-eu-gesetz-olivenoel-in-glasflaschen-zukuenftig-tabu/

[DFW]

19. Follow up: this proved to be too stupid for even the Europeans

They rescinded the measure due to a huge "do we REALLY have nothing more important to do?" outcry.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/may/23/olive-oil-producers-rage-european-u-turn