Designing a fine delicatessen

By: Peter Posert

There is more to Contimo Provisions than what is stuffed into an average sausage.

The Napa restaurant boasts a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America with experience from Michelin-starred restaurants and a charcuterie craftsman who combines talents to piece together a small deli packed full of flavors.

Back in the kitchen, there is a stock pot rolling every day for soup bases and foundation sauces. This is a deli aiming to go beyond the standard slate of offerings in more ways than one.

Contimo Provisions has a theory of Mortadella and charcuterie base that forms the wellspring of the restaurant. “You know, the first Guild was formed in England in the year 1215. It was a butcher’s guild.” said co-owner Kevin Folan. “I feel connected to that 13th Century community and want to carry that work on and expand that community.” 

The Mortadella’s pork comes from a small stockyard in the Midwest committed to traditional, non-industrial, local scale, artisanal, animal husbandry. Their small farm is trying to rebuild the community of family farmers now mostly lost to the ‘gray matter’ focused on distribution more than top quality components. Contimo Provisions in Napa, California supports that family farm in Iowa, and many like it around America.