Importers bring passion, knowledge and artisan Italian products to Seattle

Depending on your point of view, Ron Post and Ilyse Rathet are importers with a mission, or missionaries who are also importers.

Their Seattle-based company, Ritrovo Italian Regional Foods, represents 14 artisan producers from 10 regions of Italy, and many top chefs are enamored with their pastas, sauces and condiments, rice, beans, flour and grains, olive oils, vinegars and honeys. More and more consumers also are discovering Ritrovo as well, as the products increasingly find their way into retail outlets around Puget Sound.

Launched in 2000, Ritrovo evolved from relationships the couple forged during a six-year teaching sojourn in Italy in the '90s, an experience that changed them and the way they think about food and eating.

Once they brought the products into the American market, they found they were teachers again. "We had to do the translation between the regional reality and the final consumer," says Post. "We have the passion, the knowledge and the patience to educate the buyers. We usher the product practically from Earth to table."

"Chefs are the horses that have been pulling this wagon. Holly Smith is practically our godmother," says Post, referring to Cafe Juanita's chef/owner, an early and ardent supporter.

"Whenever anyone asks me where I've found something unusual on my menu, it's almost always from Ritrovo," says Smith.

Chef Matthew Dillon, who recently departed Stumbling Goat Bistro with plans to open his own restaurant, is another fan. He has paired La Bella Angiolina hand-rolled trofie noodles with quail, made gelato from Trampetti olive oil topping it with a splash of aged fig or cherry vinegar from Acetorium and says their Carnaroli risotto rice is almost impossible to overcook.

Much of Ritrovo's missionary work has involved educating people about quality olive oil, says Rathet. "Saying an olive oil is extra virgin is like saying a car has four tires. It doesn't tell you much."

A quality olive oil, she says, is pressed in a closed stainless-steel vat within 24 hours of picking and offers maximum health benefits because it is high in antioxidants, which prolongs the shelf life of the oil much as it preserves our bodies.

Their olive oils range in price from $13 for a 500-milliliter bottle of Casina Rossa Extra Virgin olive oil from Abruzzi to $30 for a 500-milliliter bottle of their top-of-the-line Trampetti Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Umbria.

To get Trampetti off the ground Rathet recalls doing 50 demos at the Roosevelt Square Whole Foods Market. "And then," she says, "they changed their bottle without telling us and a shipment came in of bottles one centimeter taller than the shelves at Whole Foods."

Post and Rathet are a couple so in sync they can finish each other's sentences. Both are seasoned academics with several graduate degrees between them. She stopped short of a Ph.D. in zoology; his field was intercultural communications. They met at the University of Washington in a class for teachers of English as a Second Language; both had decided teaching would be a way to see the world.

They married and spent three years in Japan before returning to the UW for their masters' degrees in ESL, which allowed them to qualify as teacher trainers abroad. When they arrived in Italy in 1993, they knew nothing about food.

But their jobs gave them stature, entrée to the culture and allowed them to travel widely in the country. While there, both earned diplomas from the Italian Association of Sommeliers, which not only requires extensive knowledge of wine but also food. Along the way they got to know the artisans as well.

The couple still makes pilgrimages to Italy, where they not only visit their producers, they stay with them, eat with them and work alongside them.

"We look into the souls of the people we work with," says Post. "We find something that is a regional favorite, and we translate it for the American market."

The National Association for Specialty Food Trade has recognized Ritrovo products with seven nominations in six different "best product" categories over the past five years, beginning with a gold statue in 2001 for Radici of Tuscany's white-bean appetizer, organic cannellini beans packed in olive oil and sage.

The company struck gold again this year when NASFT named Casina Rossa Truffle Salt the Outstanding Savory Condiment of 2005.

The aromatic blend of sea salt and black summer truffles has been an easy sell, and not just because of the award. "You open a jar, put it on the table, and wait," says Rathet. Just a pinch or two lends glamour to everyday foods like buttered noodles, scrambled eggs, mayonnaise, French fries, even popcorn.

A 3.5-ounce jar retails for about $20 but a little goes a long way. Five thousand have been sold nationally since the product was launched last September, making it a huge seller for tiny Ritrovo.

Has truffle salt put them on the map? "I like to think we were on the map before," says Post. "It's just that now our dot is a little bigger. The attention that the truffle salt is earning is like the gift we worked six long years to get."

The word "ritrovo" has many meanings in Italian. It's a place where people come to eat and drink, a reunion of friends, family and colleagues, or the rediscovery of something lost. All of these themes are woven into what Post and Rathet see as the mission of Ritrovo. "We believe in what we do, that it's larger than us."

If that sounds like a calling, it is. They are eager to convert people and have even outlined 13 steps toward "eating the Ritrovo way" ("Eat small portions, make a meal an event, take a walk after every meal"), not just to promote their business but also because as educators they find it exciting to teach people about the health benefits of moving toward a diet rich in vegetables, olive oil and legumes.

"We try not to be preachy, just down to earth," says Rathet.

But make no mistake. "We're fighting for quality of life," she says. "And it is a fight. You have to be committed. And we are."

Providence Cicero: providencecicero@aol.com