Inside Our Spice Sourcing Trip to Sicily

Every year we travel to the source of our signature spices. This is what the trip to western Sicily taught us about Calabrian chili.

The chili is not from Calabria. Not really. The story is more nuanced and the sourcing is more localized than any marketing team will tell you.

The best red chilies for our salts come from a small coastal strip around Diamante, where the salt air imparts a mineral finish you cannot reproduce elsewhere. We buy direct from three families there.

Our Sicilian oregano is a different story. It grows wild on limestone hillsides around Modica, and the farmers there hand-harvest it in August, wrapping it in bundles for slow drying in stone huts.